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Abstract

On 30 October 2020, an M 7.0 earthquake occurred north of Samos Island. The fault rupture caused sudden lowering of the seafloor, which produced a tsunami that mainly impacted nearby Samos Island as well as a series of Anatolian cities along the coast of Seferihisar Bay, with maximum runup and inundation lengths of about 3.8 m and 2500 m, resulting in substantial property losses. The mainshock was recorded by > 200 accelerometers from Turkish and Greek national networks for rupture distances up to 600 km. Overall levels of ground shaking, and their variation with distance, are consistent with expectation from regionally-adjusted global ground motion models. The intensity of ground shaking was near design levels in Samos Island, but well below design levels for reference rock conditions in the Anatolian coastal regions due to large source-site distances (30 to 70 km). Where site conditions were favorable (rock or shallow stiff soils), these ground motions did not damage structures. However, pronounced site effects locally amplified ground shaking at site frequencies near 0.7-1.6 Hz throughout the Izmir Bay region for both stiff and soft soil sites. This amplification was particularly pronounced on soft soils in the Bayrakli district, which led to significant structural damage. The earthquake produced isolated incidents of rockfalls and landslides, mainly in the northern part of Samos Island. We document these ground failures, as well as several “no-ground failure” case histories in Anatolia. Liquefaction was observed in different parts of Samos island, including ports. The emergency responses in Greece and Turkey provided support to residents displaced from their homes. In both regions, educational efforts with local government officials and residents had been undertaken prior to the event that were helpful.
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... Meanwhile the Aegean plate advances rapidly to the south overriding the almost stalled African slab, causing N-S extension in parts of upper plate of Anatolia and Aegean Sea (Taymaz et al. 1990 ;Papazachos et al. 1998 ;Ganas & Parsons 2009 ;Yolsal-C ¸evikbilen & Taymaz 2012 ;Meng et al. 2021 ). These complex tectonic interplays create active seismicity, so the Aegean Sea and western T ürkiye regions have a history of moderate to large earthquakes (Benetatos et al. 2006 ;Yolsal-C ¸evikbilen et al. 2014 ;Kassaras et al. 2020 ;Papadimitriou et al. 2020 ;Cetin et al. 2020 and references therein). In addition, due to the oceanic environment, the Aegean Sea region is at significant risk of tsunamis generated by earthquakes. ...
... In this tectonic setting, on 30 October 2020 11:51 UTC, a M w 7.0 earthquake occurred in the eastern Aegean Sea nearby Samos Island, affecting Samos Island in Greece and Ku s ¸adası Bay surrounding nearby İ zmir Province in T ürkiye (Papadimitriou et al. 2020 ;Ganas et al. 2021 ;Taymaz et al. 2022 ; Fig. 1 ). The Samos earthquake caused a total of 119 deaths, more than 1000 injuries, and some structural damage and building collapses in both areas (Cetin et al. 2020 ;Mavroulis et al. 2022 ). The ensuing tsunami impacted and flooded the southern coastal area of İ zmir and Samos Island and affected other eastern Aegean Sea islands (Cetin et al. 2020 ;Dogan et al. 2021 ;Kalligeris et al. 2021 ;Triantafyllou et al. 2021 ). ...
... The Samos earthquake caused a total of 119 deaths, more than 1000 injuries, and some structural damage and building collapses in both areas (Cetin et al. 2020 ;Mavroulis et al. 2022 ). The ensuing tsunami impacted and flooded the southern coastal area of İ zmir and Samos Island and affected other eastern Aegean Sea islands (Cetin et al. 2020 ;Dogan et al. 2021 ;Kalligeris et al. 2021 ;Triantafyllou et al. 2021 ). Dogan et al. ( 2021 ) measured and investigated tsunami runup and inundation, focusing on a ∼110-km-long stretch of coastline in T ürkiye and found that the largest tsunami run-up was 3.8 m at an inundation distance of 91 m at Akarca (Seferihisar, İ zmir). ...
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We present a kinematic slip model and a simulation of the ensuing tsunami for the 2020 Mw 7.0 Néon Karlovásion (Samos, Eastern Aegean Sea) earthquake, generated from a joint inversion of high-rate GNSS, strong ground motion and InSAR data. From the inversion, we find that the source time function has a total duration of ∼20 s with three peaks at ∼4, 7.5 and 15 s corresponding to the development of three asperities. Most of the slip occurs at the west of the hypocenter and ends at the northwest down-dip edge. The peak slip is ∼3.3 m, and the inverted rake angles indicate predominantly normal faulting motion. Compared with previous studies, these slip patterns have essentially similar asperity location, rupture dimension and anti-correlation with aftershocks. Consistent with our study, most published papers show the source duration of ∼20 s with three episodes of increased moment releases. For the ensuing tsunami, the eight available gauge records indicate that the tsunami waves last ∼18-30 hours depending on location, and the response period of tsunami is ∼10-35 min. The initial waves in the observed records and synthetic simulations show good agreement, which indirectly validates the performance of the inverted slip model. However, the synthetic waveforms struggle to generate long-duration tsunami behavior in simulations. Our tests suggest that the resolution of the bathymetry may be a potential factor affecting the simulated tsunami duration and amplitude. It should be noted that the maximum wave height in the records may occur after the decay of synthetic wave amplitudes. This implies that the inability to model long-duration tsunamis could result in underestimation in future tsunami hazard assessments.
... It is well known that high damage levels were observed in some Izmir areas (e.g., Bayrakli district) due to the joint influence of site-effects and poor construction quality. More specifically, the observed high spectral accelerations in Izmir, particularly within the mid-to-long period (0.6 s-1.5 s) range due to soft soil amplification, the different structural typologies and the height of structures, contributed to the heavy damage locally observed (Cetin et al. 2020). ...
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We investigate the possibility of combined interpretation of macroseismic and strong-motion data for recent large earthquakes in the Aegean area. We employ macroseismic information derived from EMSC testimonies, as well as strong-motion information extracted from online sources provided by two Greek institutes (ITSAK and GEIN-NOA). The EMSC testimonies database (https://www.seismicportal.eu/testimonies-ws/) is a widely used inventory for the damage distribution of significant earthquakes. The collected data were first compared with the predicted macroseismic intensities using the empirical relation of Papazachos and Papaioannou (J Seismol 1:181–201, 1997) While the correlation between the observed and modeled data was found to be satisfactory, a systematic bias is evident for very high and very low values intensities derived from the reported EMSC testimonies. A Monte Carlo simulation approach was employed to identify the source of this bias, suggesting that it is a result of the large scatter of the EMSC data and the limits of the macroseismic scale used. To minimize this effect, a spatial grouping and smoothing approach was adopted for the EMSC dataset, resulting in significantly improved correlations with the available independent strong motion estimates, such as PGA and PGV. Using this correlation, we demonstrate through several examples that it is possible to reconstruct the main features of the damage pattern for strong earthquakes in the Aegean. This is achieved by jointly analyzing rapidly crowdsourced EMSC data and strong motion information, after appropriate processing of the raw macroseismic dataset.
... Recently, an M w 7 off-shore normal earthquake occurred in the Aegean Sea, close to the shores of Samos Island and Izmir in Western Türkiye (also known as the Samos earthquake, Cetin et al., 2020). This well-recorded earthquake with 30 recordings within R RUP < 100 km (Askan et al., 2021) provided a rare opportunity to test the applicability of the global and regional GMMs for large-magnitude normal events. ...
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... The North Anatolian and the East Anatolian Fault Zones are major earthquake tectonic structures that are responsible for the generation of many damaging earthquakes not only during antiquity and the historical period but also during the period of instrumental recordings [23,24]. The high level of seismic hazard in Turkey could be highlighted by the recent generation of destructive earthquakes with Mw ≥ 6.0, namely the 24 January 2020 Mw = 6.8 Elazıg earthquake [25,26], the 30 October 2020, Mw = 7.0 Samos earthquake [27][28][29][30] and the 23 November 2022 Mw = 6.1 Düzce earthquake [31]. Many other seismic events have occurred in the past and are among the largest and most destructive earthquakes worldwide such as the 17 August 1999, Mw = 7.6 Izmit earthquake [32,33], among others. ...
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On 30 October 2020 11:51 UTC, a Mw=6.9 earthquake struck the offshore region north of Samos Island, Greece, in the Gulf of Ephesos/Kuşadasi, causing two fatalities and 19 minor injuries at Samos Island, as well as 115 casualties and over 1,030 injuries in Western Turkey. Preliminary results indicate that the mainshock occurred on a north-dipping normal fault, with a focal mechanism of 270º/50º/-81º. The selection of the fault plane is supported by evidence of uplift at western Samos and over 10 cm of subsidence at the northernmost edge of the central part of the island. The distribution of relocated hypocenters shows clustering of events, east of the mainshock's epicenter, where most major aftershocks have occurred. To the west, a smaller group of aftershocks is observed, separated by a spatial gap in seismicity. The latter is likely related to the region of the fault plane where most of the co-seismic slip occurred, with Coulomb stress-transfer towards the western and eastern margins of the rupture triggering aftershock activity. The apparent complexity of the mainshock's source time function, supported by preliminary results, could indicate the rupture of more than one structures. This could explain the relatively weak magnitude of the largest aftershock (Mw=5.0). The mainshock caused damage mainly to non-engineered constructions, i.e. old residential buildings, churches and monuments in Samos Island, and minor damage to the majority of the building stock of the island built according to the National Seismic Code. On the other hand, it caused severe damage at Izmir, especially to high-rise
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On the role of basin effects for the case of strong ground motions recorded in Izmir (Turkey) during the October 30th, 2020 M 7.0 Aegean Sea earthquake. Along these lines, the herein presented short note is a first attempt to understand the reasons of heavy damages in Izmir by investigating the possible basin effects on the recorded ground motions (TK network). Moreover, having obtained some preliminary indications and insights on the site response topic using spectral ratios techniques, the elastic response spectra of the recorded motions are compared to the elastic design spectrum specified in old and modern Turkish seismic codes for those stations that are located in heavily-damaged areas of Izmir, in order to provide some further explanations of the damages and the associated heavy fatalities.
Technical Report
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Technical report of the Hellenic Association for Earthquake Engineering (ΗΑΕΕ/ΕΤΑΜ) on the seismological, structural and geotechnical aspects of the 30/10/2020 Samos Earthquake.
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Two of the most important parameters in any dynamic analysis involving soils are the shear modulus and damping ratio. Based on lab tests on gravels from 18 investigations, simplified equations to define G/Gmax and the damping ratio as a function of shear strain, γ, have been developed. The G/Gmax versus γ equations rely on two parameters that can be defined in terms of confining pressure and uniformity coefficient. Increasing confining pressure leads to a more linear curve, while increasing the uniformity coefficient leads to a more nonlinear curve shape. G/Gmax versus γ curves for gravels tend to plot somewhat below curves for sands under similar conditions. Estimates of the standard deviation in G/Gmax versus γ curves are provided to consider scatter about the mean. The damping ratio versus γ equation employs the modified Masing approach with a minimum damping ratio of 1%. In addition, about 67% of the damping data points fall within an error band of ±33% from the computed value. The damping ratio of gravel specimens also decreases as the confining pressure increases, whereas it increases for higher uniformity coefficients. Other direct correlations between damping ratio and factors such as shear strain, uniformity coefficient, and confining pressure did not provide significant improvements in predictive capacity.