Citation: Harith, N.S.H.; Tongkul, F.; Adnan, A. Seismic Hazard Curve as Dynamic Parameters in Earthquake Building Design for Sabah, Malaysia. Buildings 2023, 13, 318. https:// doi.org/10.3390/buildings13020318 Academic Editors: Rafael Shehu, Nicola Tarque and Manuel Buitrago Received: 6 December 2022 Revised: 11 January 2023 Accepted: 16 January 2023 Published: 20 January 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). buildings Article Seismic Hazard Curve as Dynamic Parameters in Earthquake Building Design for Sabah, Malaysia Noor Sheena Herayani Harith 1,2, * , Felix Tongkul 2 and Azlan Adnan 3 1 Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, Kota Kinabalu 88400, Sabah, Malaysia 2 Natural Disaster Research Centre (NDRC), Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, Kota Kinabalu 88400, Sabah, Malaysia 3 School of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Johor, Malaysia * Correspondence: sheena@ums.edu.my Abstract: This paper presents the significance of a seismic hazard curve plot as a dynamic parameter in estimating earthquake-resistant structures. Various cases of structural damages in Malaysia are due to underestimating earthquake loadings since mostly buildings were designed without seismic loads. Sabah is classified as having low to moderate seismic activity due to a few active fault lines. Background point, area, and line sources are the three tectonic features that have impacted Sabah. Data on earthquakes from 1900 to 2021 have been collected by a number of earthquake data centers. The seismicity is based on a list of historical seismicities in the area, which stretches from latitudes 4 ◦ S to 8 ◦ N and longitudes 115 ◦ E to 120 ◦ E. The goal of this research is to develop a seismic hazard curve based on a conventional probabilistic seismic hazard analysis being examined for the maximum peak ground acceleration at 10% probability of exceedance as published in MSEN1998-1:2015. This study extended to 5% and 2% probability of exceedance combined with the seismic hazard curve by using Ranau as a case study. To calculate the expected ground motion recurrence, such as peak ground acceleration at the site, earthquake recurrence models were combined with selected ground motion models. A logic tree structure was used to combine simple quantities such as maximum magnitudes and the chosen ground motion models to describe epistemic uncertainty. The result demonstrates that peak ground acceleration values at the bedrock were estimated to be 0.16, 0.21, and 0.28 g of the total seismic hazard curve at 10%, 5%, and 2% PE in a 50-year return period, respectively. The seismic hazard study at a Ranau site basically depends on the seismicity of a region and the consequences of failure in the past. Thus, the results can be used as a basis for benchmarking design or evaluation decisions and for designing remedial measures for Sabah constructions to minimize structural failure. Keywords: hazard curve; moderate earthquake; design standard; structural failure 1. Introduction Earthquakes are a sequence of movements caused by a sudden release of energy due to fault displacement. This seismic vibration can cause the earth to shake, potentially affecting heavily populated areas and resulting in human injury and death. Thus, buildings and nonstructural elements must be able to withstand seismic loads to reduce the number of deaths from these incidents. Alberto et al. [1] found that securing building safety is essential based on their examination of building failure. Furthermore, as demonstrated by Perrone et al. [2], nonstructural elements must also improve seismic regulations because this type of structure performs poorly during earthquakes. Malaysia is located on the stable Eurasian plate to the south and within stable continental regions (SCR). Large earthquakes are considered to occur relatively infrequently in SCR, and if they do, there also will inevitably be damage. In SCR, faults are often unknown, and seismic source characteristics are subject to greater uncertainty. The deformation of Southeast Asia was a combined result Buildings 2023, 13, 318. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings13020318 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/buildings