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Earthquake-induced liquefaction and landslides in Cali, Colombia
Report
Earthquake-induced landslides and liquefaction are important secondary earthquake perils that can
cause substantial damage to the built environment in addition to direct damage caused by seismic
ground shaking. In spite of their impacts, they are not regularly included in probabilistic seismic hazard
and risk analysis (PSHRA), in part because they have not been incorporated in most PSHRA
frameworks such as GEM’s OpenQuake Engine. As part of the TREQ project, existing landslide and
liquefaction models were implemented within the OpenQuake Engine, and have been made available
for both probabilistic and deterministic (scenario) analyses. In this study we present the
methodological approach we used to implement these models using the city of Cali as the case study.
Regarding coseismic landslides, found that the probability of coseismic landslides within the city limits
of Cali is extremely small, although it is likely higher in the adjacent mountain regions. For liquefaction
analysis, we tested the models on seismic scenarios selected by the USGS through a hazard
disaggregation process. The risk metrics obtained suggest that, in the case of liquefaction, the models
make an appropriate prediction of the spatial distribution of damage and loss. However,in terms of the
absolute number of damaged structures, estimates for both, landslide and liquefaction risk, are
inconsistent with the level of damage and loss obtained from the ground shaking. Hence, we concluded
that the existing methodologies do not perform satisfactorily in urban risk applications.
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