Seismic hazard map for Cuba and adjacent areas using the spatially smoothed seismicity approach

The seismic hazard assessment for Cuba and the surrounding regions has been performed according to the spatially smoothed seismicity approach. The major motivation for using this methodology is to avoid drawing seismic sources in a region where the seismogenic structures are not well known. We have defined two different seismicity models and three zonation models, based on the evidence of seismotectonic heterogeneity of the broader Cuban region, and two attenuation models for rock and three for soil. The resulting hazard estimates have been treated with a logic tree approach. The highest hazard was obtained around Santiago de Cuba with a PGA larger than 0.28 g on rock and 0.40 g on soil, for a 475-year return period. When the epistemic uncertainties of the different models considered are taken into account, these ground motion values exceed 0.40 g on rock and 0.60 g on soil. A comparison between these new hazard estimates and those computed according to the standard approach of the seismotectonic probabilism indicates the areas where the spatial distribution of the seismicity supports the seismogenic zonation and the areas where a disagreement exists.