Author(s)

Ali Hassan Baaqeel^1*, Said Ali El- Quliti², Yahya Ali Daghreri³, Sultan Abdullah Bin Hajlaa⁴, Hadi Hussain Al- Yami⁵

¹Health, Safety and Environment, Economic Cities Ports, King Abdullah Economic City, Saudi Arabia.
²Department of Industrial Engineering, King Abdul-Aziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
³Crisis and Disasters Management Team, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
⁴Tides and Notice to Mariners Department, General Commission for Survey, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
⁵Health Affairs, Saudi National Guard, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Humans coexist with extreme events all the time, only when the intensity of the event becomes greater than a certain level there is a resulting disaster. Small earthquakes occur all of the time with no adverse effects. Only large earthquakes cause disasters. Statistical analysis reveals that larger events occur less frequently than small events. In a year, we would have many values for the events; the annual maximum was the greatest of those values. Within an annual series, only the largest value per year is allowed, even if an additional significant peak occurs. As the magnitude of a hazardous increases, the frequency of occurrence (how often a given magnitude is equaled or exceeded) decreases. Thus, major disasters result from a small number of large events that rarely occur. A plot of recurrence intervals versus associated magnitudes produces a group of points that also approximates a straight line on semi-logarithmic paper. Therefore, past records of earthquakes at the Gulf of Aqaba, Northern Red Sea for months from May, 1999 to Feb, 2016 are used to predict future conditions concerning the annual frequency, the return period, the percentage probability for each event, and the probability of a certain-magnitude earthquake occurring in the region during any period.

Earthquakes, Gulf of Aqaba, Northern Red Sea, Magnitude, Recurrence

Baaqeel, A. , Quliti, S. , Daghreri, Y. , Hajlaa, S. and Yami, H. (2016) Estimating the Frequency, Magnitude and Recurrence of Extreme Earthquakes in Gulf of Aqaba, Northern Red Sea. Open Journal of Earthquake Research, 5, 135-152. doi: 10.4236/ojer.2016.52011.