57d10c74-c37c-5d5f-e063-3050940a43b5 English dataset British Geological Survey +44 131 667 1000 The Lyell Centre, Research Avenue South EDINBURGH LOTHIAN EH14 4AP United Kingdom enquiries@bgs.ac.uk pointOfContact 2026-08-04 UK GEMINI 2.3 http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13608753 OSGB 1936 / British National Grid (EPSG::27700) The 2026 seismic hazard maps for the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, and the offshore Exclusive Economic Zone 2026-07-23 creation http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13608753 he 2026 offshore and onshore seismic hazard maps cover the UK, the Channel Islands, and the UK offshore Exclusive Economic Zone EEZ (UK commercial waters). The data comprises a grid of 4663 points that are spaced 0.125° in latitude and 0.25° in longitude, and is developed for an additional ground motion parameter, spectral acceleration at 0.15 s. Therefore, the 2026 hazard maps are for four ground motion parameters, i.e. peak ground acceleration (PGA), spectral acceleration at 0.15 s (SA0.15 s), 0.2 s (SA0.2 s) and 1.0 s (SA1.0 s), for 5% damping and rock conditions and five return periods, i.e. 95, 475, 1100, 2475, and 5000 years. The report of Mosca (2026) describes these updated maps in detail, whereas the technical report by Mosca et al. (2024) provides a detailed description of the methods (see also http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/hazard/UKhazard.html). The input data to compute the maps are in in Mosca et al. (2025; DOI: https://doi.org/10.5285/a6babafa-5c82-4e76-aef5-27441104187f). The map for spectral acceleration at 0.15 s has been used to calibrate the seismic design requirements in the second-generation Eurocode 8 to the hazard levels of the UK and will be cited in the British Standards UK National Annex and PD6698. Enquiries British Geological Survey 0115 936 3142 0115 936 3276 The Lyell Centre, Research Avenue South EDINBURGH LOTHIAN EH14 4AP United Kingdom enquiries@bgs.ac.uk distributor Enquiries British Geological Survey 0115 936 3142 0115 936 3276 The Lyell Centre, Research Avenue South EDINBURGH LOTHIAN EH14 4AP United Kingdom enquiries@bgs.ac.uk originator Enquiries British Geological Survey United Kingdom not available distributor Enquiries British Geological Survey United Kingdom not available pointOfContact notApplicable https://resources.bgs.ac.uk/images/geonetworkThumbs/57d10c74-c37c-5d5f-e063-3050940a43b5.png Geology GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0 2008-06-01 publication Natural hazards Seismic data BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences 2022 revision Citable Data NGDC Deposited Data dataCentre NERC_DDC otherRestrictions licenceOGL Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]" otherRestrictions The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused. Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]" vector English geoscientificInformation ISO 3166_1 alpha-3 2009 revision GB British Geological Survey Gazetteer: Geographical hierarchy from Geosaurus 1979 creation UK CONTINENTAL SHELF [id=121701] British Geological Survey Gazetteer: Geographical hierarchy from Geosaurus 1979 creation UK [id=139300] ISO 3166_2 2009 revision UKM -14.9000 3.4000 47.4400 63.8900 2026-02-16 2026-04-11 txt Enquiries British Geological Survey 0115 936 3142 0115 936 3276 The Lyell Centre, Research Avenue South EDINBURGH LOTHIAN EH14 4AP United Kingdom enquiries@bgs.ac.uk distributor Enquiries British Geological Survey United Kingdom not available distributor https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/services/ngdc/accessions/index.html#item192851 WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download Data download https://doi.org/10.5285/c9013191-cc5f-428a-a3e8-fb4560f2e689 WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related Citation Information - Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Mosca, I. (2026). The 2026 seismic hazard maps for the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, and the offshore Exclusive Economic Zone. NERC EDS National Geoscience Data Centre. (Dataset). https://doi.org/10.5285/c9013191-cc5f-428a-a3e8-fb4560f2e689 information dataset dataset INSPIRE Implementing rules laying down technical arrangements for the interoperability and harmonisation of Geology 2011 publication See the referenced specification false Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services 2010-12-08 publication See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF false We use probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA) to produce a probabilistic description of expected ground shaking that may occur at a site. This consists of four steps: 1) Definition of seismic sources based on the tectonics, geology and seismicity in the region, forming a seismic source model. 2) Quantification of the rate of earthquake occurrence for each seismic source using the Gutenberg-Richter law. 3) Characterisation of the earthquake effects. 4) Estimation of the hazard at the site(s) by integrating over the seismic sources for the location and size of future earthquakes with expected ground shaking. We used Monte Carlo-based PSHA to generate artificial catalogues by random sampling of the probability distributions in the seismic source model and computing the predicted ground motion for the synthetic events.