| Abstract: | Earthquake regions in Germany – a statistical evaluation. In context with the development of the German Seismic Code DIN 4149: 2005 a new zoning map has been elaborated. Before obtaining the status of an official document, the affected administrative units have to be assigned to the corresponding zones, under the responsibility of the German states. On the basis of recent statistical data provided by the state offices the shares of each federal state to the whole area of the individual seismic zones are evaluated. To gain a more detailed insight concerning the practical consequences, in addition to the size of the covered areas the number of inhabitants and buildings within theses zones are determined and compared. It can be concluded that about 60% of all zone 3 areas belong to Baden‐Wuerttemberg (BW) and about 40% to North Rhine‐Westphalia (NRW), but in contrast and due to the different density of settlement, from the about 0.35 Mio residential buildings in the highest zone3, about 65% of the buildings belong to NRW and only 35% to BW. The number of buildings in the lower zones2 and 1 is – if one follows purely the statistical facts – high. Regarding the generally acknowledged high quality of construction standards in Germany a check of inherent earthquake resistance (of structures without antiseismic provisions) is recommended in order to reduce design requirements. Using the ratio between the reference acceleration of the new and the previous code version and zoning maps regions, different levels of change (ranging from the neglect or reduction to a serious increase of design parameters) are distinguished. |
