Development of Detailed Micro-Land Form Database and Its Application to Site Amplification Characteristics in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

Abstract

Structural characteristic of surface soil ground has great effect on the ground motion amplitude when earthquake happens. Recent studies in Japan on seismic zonings use a database that covers entire Japan with 1 km mesh size, which is useful for prefecture scale researches. However, it is hard, even with 500 m or 250 m mesh sizes to consider a city, a county or award as scale studies. Kanagawa Prefecture is highly urbanized and vulnerable to seismic disaster. The prefecture suffered a wide spread damage during the 1923 Kanto earthquake. In this paper, we deploy a very fine mesh 50 × 50 m mesh to develop a general seismic intensity map useful for micro scale disaster management for local governments and educational information for earthquake preparedness promotion. In this paper, first we prepared two detailed databases for 50 × 50 m mesh size over entire Kanagawa Prefecture. One was for geologic formations and the other the geomorphologic condition. Then these databases were used for preparation of high-resolution digital soil classification maps for 15 categories of micro landforms of prefecture. The later database was used for mapping the site amplification factors for 50 × 50 m mesh by applying the empirical relations for AVS30. We could create a GIS platform with sufficient accuracy to consider potential risk analysis.