Earthquake Loss Evaluation (ELE) for the City of Khujand, Sughd Province, Tajikistan. GI_Forum|GI_Forum 2016, Volume 2 – open:spatial:interfaces

The main scope of the present article is to describe the different technical aspects and steps that were implemented towards a thorough earthquake risk estimation for the city of Khujand, the capital of Tajikistan’s northernmost province, Sughd. The development of the risk model involved both extensive fieldwork and computational work, including: soil amplification studies; defining ground shaking scenarios for earthquakes on local active faults that could cause damage, and for historical earthquakes that have caused damage to the city’s building stock; demarcation of the Khujand city area and its subdivision into geographical units; definition of building typology classes and generating corresponding vulnerability functions; collection of building inventory data as well as socio-economic information, and the computation of damage and loss scenarios. The earthquake risk model for the city of Khujand can be used as guidance for local authorities for future city planning and earthquake mitigation actions by helping to predict earthquake intensity in a given location, and the expected damage and socio-economic losses for any class of building. The procedure and many of the conclusions drawn can be applied in risk studies of other areas in Tajikistan and Central Asia.