Seismic hazard assessment in Panama

In this study we have created a set of three iso-acceleration maps for the Isthmus of Panama. These maps represent the expected peak ground acceleration (PGA) values, at soil sites, for annual exceedance probabilities of 0.004, 0.002 and 0.001, which correspond to return periods of 250, 500 and 1000 years, respectively. We have based our calculations on a seismotectonic synthesis of the Panama Block (Camacho, 1993), a new Central American moment magnitude (Mw) scale earthquake catalog (Rojas et al., 1993) and a strong motion attenuation relation (Climent et al., 1994), developed from Central American and Mexican data.