Actualización del mapa de microzonificación geotécnica del nw de la ciudad de Portoviejo.

Abstract

The city of Portoviejo is located in a high tectonic activity area, this makes it prone to earthquakes of great intensity such as the one that occurred on April 16, 2016. The reconstruction of the city has taken several years, building infrastructure on previously uninhabited sites. The geotechnical study of soils and the analysis of the physical-mechanical properties, allows us to divide a geographic area according to its response sensitivity in the presence of earthquakes or other disturbances on the site. This study was carried out in several sectors located in the NW of the city of Portoviejo, more than 100 samples obtained during the drilling campaign, 4 boreholes of approximately 30 m depth were made. Analyzing the samples in the laboratory and the tests carried out in situ, important parameters were obtained to characterize geotechnically the soils found in the area. With the resulting information and the data obtained in previous studies, interpolation maps were made to visualize the spatial distribution of the soil characteristics, and were classified to obtain the areas with the best geotechnical qualities. The NW zone of the city of Portoviejo is located on sediments of fluvial environment, forming relatively young deposits, constituted by soft soils, which can be susceptible to develop liquefaction and generate site effects that can increase the seismic risk causing damage to the structures of civil works built in the area.