Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 15, 1103–1121, 2015 www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/15/1103/2015/ doi:10.5194/nhess-15-1103-2015 © Author(s) 2015. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Seismic vulnerability and risk assessment of Kolkata City, India S. K. Nath, M. D. Adhikari, N. Devaraj, and S. K. Maiti Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, 721302, West Bengal, India Correspondence to: S. K. Nath (
[email protected]) Received: 10 December 2013 – Published in Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss.: 30 April 2014 Revised: 2 December 2014 – Accepted: 4 May 2015 – Published: 2 June 2015 Abstract. The city of Kolkata is one of the most urbanized last 100 years accounted for more than 1.9 million deaths. and densely populated regions in the world and a major in- An estimated average of 17 000 persons were killed ev- dustrial and commercial hub of the eastern and northeastern ery year. Seismic vulnerability in India is well evidenced region of India. In order to classify the seismic risk zones by numerous past earthquake-related calamities viz. 1993 of Kolkata we used seismic hazard exposures on the vulner- Killary earthquake of Mw D 6.2, 1997 Jabalpur earthquake ability components, namely land use/land cover, population of Mw D 5.8, 1999 Chamoli earthquake of Mw D 6.8, 2001 density, building typology, age and height. We microzoned Bhuj earthquake of Mw D 7.7, 2005 Kashmir earthquake of seismic hazard of the city by integrating seismological, ge- Mw D 7.6 and 2011 Sikkim earthquake of Mw D 6.9.