scholarly journals Local and Moment Magnitude Analysis in the Ridgecrest Region, California: Impact on Interevent Ground-Motion Variability

Author(s):  
Dino Bindi ◽  
Riccardo Zaccarelli ◽  
Sreeram Reddy Kotha

ABSTRACT We investigate the dependence of event-specific ground-motion residuals in the Ridgecrest region, California. We focus on the impact of using either local (ML) or moment (Mw) magnitude, for describing the source scaling of a regional ground-motion model. To analyze homogeneous Mw, we compute the source spectra of about 2000 earthquakes in the magnitude range 2.5–7.1, by performing a nonparametric spectral decomposition. Seismic moments and corner frequencies are derived from the best-fit ω−2 source models, and stress drop is computed assuming standard circular rupture model. The Brune stress drop varies between 0.62 and 24.63 MPa (with median equal to 3.0 MPa), and values for Mw>5 are mostly distributed above the 90th percentile. The median scaled energy for Mw<5 is −4.57, and the low values obtained for the Mw 6.4 and 7.1 mainshocks (−5 and −5.2, respectively) agree with previous studies. We calibrate an ad hoc nonparametric ML scale for the Ridgecrest region. The main differences with the standard ML scale for California are observed at distances between 30 and 100 km, in which differences up to 0.4 magnitude units are obtained. Finally, we calibrate ground-motion models for the Fourier amplitude spectra, considering the ML and Mw scales derived in this study and the magnitudes extracted from Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog. The analysis of the residuals shows that ML better describes the interevent variability above 2 Hz. At intermediate frequencies (between about 3 and 8 Hz), the interevent residuals for the model based on Mw show a correlation with stress drop: this correlation disappears, when ML is used. The choice of the magnitude scale has an impact also on the statistical uncertainty of the median model: for any fixed magnitude value, the epistemic uncertainty is larger for ML below 1.5 Hz and larger for Mw above 1.5 Hz.

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward H. Field ◽  
Hope A. Seligson ◽  
Nitin Gupta ◽  
Vipin Gupta ◽  
Thomas H. Jordan ◽  
...  

Based on OpenSHA and HAZUS-MH, we present loss estimates for an earthquake rupture on the recently identified Puente Hills blind-thrust fault beneath Los Angeles. Given a range of possible magnitudes and ground motion models, and presuming a full fault rupture, we estimate the total economic loss to be between $82 and $252 billion. This range is not only considerably higher than a previous estimate of $69 billion, but also implies the event would be the costliest disaster in U.S. history. The analysis has also provided the following predictions: 3,000–18,000 fatalities, 142,000–735,000 displaced households, 42,000–211,000 in need of short-term public shelter, and 30,000–99,000 tons of debris generated. Finally, we show that the choice of ground motion model can be more influential than the earthquake magnitude, and that reducing this epistemic uncertainty (e.g., via model improvement and/or rejection) could reduce the uncertainty of the loss estimates by up to a factor of two. We note that a full Puente Hills fault rupture is a rare event (once every ∼3,000 years), and that other seismic sources pose significant risk as well.


2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 481-498 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian J. Bommer ◽  
Peter J. Stafford ◽  
Benjamin Edwards ◽  
Bernard Dost ◽  
Ewoud van Dedem ◽  
...  

The potential for building damage and personal injury due to induced earthquakes in the Groningen gas field is being modeled in order to inform risk management decisions. To facilitate the quantitative estimation of the induced seismic hazard and risk, a ground motion prediction model has been developed for response spectral accelerations and duration due to these earthquakes that originate within the reservoir at 3 km depth. The model is consistent with the motions recorded from small-magnitude events and captures the epistemic uncertainty associated with extrapolation to larger magnitudes. In order to reflect the conditions in the field, the model first predicts accelerations at a rock horizon some 800 m below the surface and then convolves these motions with frequency-dependent nonlinear amplification factors assigned to zones across the study area. The variability of the ground motions is modeled in all of its constituent parts at the rock and surface levels.


Author(s):  
Soumya Kanti Maiti ◽  
Gony Yagoda-Biran ◽  
Ronnie Kamai

ABSTRACT Models for estimating earthquake ground motions are a key component in seismic hazard analysis. In data-rich regions, these models are mostly empirical, relying on the ever-increasing ground-motion databases. However, in areas in which strong-motion data are scarce, other approaches for ground-motion estimates are sought, including, but not limited to, the use of simulations to replace empirical data. In Israel, despite a clear seismic hazard posed by the active plate boundary on its eastern border, the instrumental record is sparse and poor, leading to the use of global models for hazard estimation in the building code and all other engineering applications. In this study, we develop a suite of alternative ground-motion models for Israel, based on an empirical database from Israel as well as on four data-calibrated synthetic databases. Two host models are used to constrain model behavior, such that the epistemic uncertainty is captured and characterized. Despite the lack of empirical data at large magnitudes and short distances, constraints based on the host models or on the physical grounds provided by simulations ensure these models are appropriate for engineering applications. The models presented herein are cast in terms of the Fourier amplitude spectra, which is a linear, physical representation of ground motions. The models are suitable for shallow crustal earthquakes; they include an estimate of the median and the aleatory variability, and are applicable in the magnitude range of 3–8 and distance range of 1–300 km.


2021 ◽  
pp. 875529302110552
Author(s):  
Silvia Mazzoni ◽  
Tadahiro Kishida ◽  
Jonathan P Stewart ◽  
Victor Contreras ◽  
Robert B Darragh ◽  
...  

The Next-Generation Attenuation for subduction zone regions project (NGA-Sub) has developed data resources and ground motion models for global subduction zone regions. Here we describe the NGA-Sub database. To optimize the efficiency of data storage, access, and updating, data resources for the NGA-Sub project are organized into a relational database consisting of 20 tables containing data, metadata, and computed quantities (e.g. intensity measures, distances). A database schema relates fields in tables to each other through a series of primary and foreign keys. Model developers and other users mostly interact with the data through a flatfile generated as a time-stamped output of the database. We describe the structure of the relational database, the ground motions compiled for the project, and the means by which the data can be accessed. The database contains 71,340 three-component records from 1880 earthquakes from seven global subduction zone regions: Alaska, Central America and Mexico, Cascadia, Japan, New Zealand, South America, and Taiwan. These data were processed on a component-specific basis to minimize noise effects in the data and remove baseline drifts. Provided ground motion intensity measures include peak acceleration, peak velocity, and 5%-damped pseudo-spectral accelerations for a range of oscillator periods.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grigorios Lavrentiadis ◽  
Norman A. Abrahamson ◽  
Nicolas M. Kuehn

Abstract A new non-ergodic ground-motion model (GMM) for effective amplitude spectral (EAS) values for California is presented in this study. EAS, which is defined in Goulet et al. (2018), is a smoothed rotation-independent Fourier amplitude spectrum of the two horizontal components of an acceleration time history. The main motivation for developing a non-ergodic EAS GMM, rather than a spectral acceleration GMM, is that the scaling of EAS does not depend on spectral shape, and therefore, the more frequent small magnitude events can be used in the estimation of the non-ergodic terms. The model is developed using the California subset of the NGAWest2 dataset Ancheta et al. (2013). The Bayless and Abrahamson (2019b) (BA18) ergodic EAS GMM was used as backbone to constrain the average source, path, and site scaling. The non-ergodic GMM is formulated as a Bayesian hierarchical model: the non-ergodic source and site terms are modeled as spatially varying coefficients following the approach of Landwehr et al. (2016), and the non-ergodic path effects are captured by the cell-specific anelastic attenuation attenuation following the approach of Dawood and Rodriguez-Marek (2013). Close to stations and past events, the mean values of the non-ergodic terms deviate from zero to capture the systematic effects and their epistemic uncertainty is small. In areas with sparse data, the epistemic uncertainty of the non-ergodic terms is large, as the systematic effects cannot be determined. The non-ergodic total aleatory standard deviation is approximately 30 to 40% smaller than the total aleatory standard deviation of BA18. This reduction in the aleatory variability has a significant impact on hazard calculations at large return periods. The epistemic uncertainty of the ground motion predictions is small in areas close to stations and past event.


2021 ◽  
pp. 875529302110560
Author(s):  
Yousef Bozorgnia ◽  
Norman A Abrahamson ◽  
Sean K Ahdi ◽  
Timothy D Ancheta ◽  
Linda Al Atik ◽  
...  

This article summarizes the Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) Subduction (NGA-Sub) project, a major research program to develop a database and ground motion models (GMMs) for subduction regions. A comprehensive database of subduction earthquakes recorded worldwide was developed. The database includes a total of 214,020 individual records from 1,880 subduction events, which is by far the largest database of all the NGA programs. As part of the NGA-Sub program, four GMMs were developed. Three of them are global subduction GMMs with adjustment factors for up to seven worldwide regions: Alaska, Cascadia, Central America and Mexico, Japan, New Zealand, South America, and Taiwan. The fourth GMM is a new Japan-specific model. The GMMs provide median predictions, and the associated aleatory variability, of RotD50 horizontal components of peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, and 5%-damped pseudo-spectral acceleration (PSA) at oscillator periods ranging from 0.01 to 10 s. Three GMMs also quantified “within-model” epistemic uncertainty of the median prediction, which is important in regions with sparse ground motion data, such as Cascadia. In addition, a damping scaling model was developed to scale the predicted 5%-damped PSA of horizontal components to other damping ratios ranging from 0.5% to 30%. The NGA-Sub flatfile, which was used for the development of the NGA-Sub GMMs, and the NGA-Sub GMMs coded on various software platforms, have been posted for public use.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olga-Joan Ktenidou ◽  
Faidra Gkika ◽  
Erion-Vasilis Pikoulis ◽  
Christos Evangelidis

<p>Although it is nowadays desirable and even typical to characterise site conditions in detail at modern recording stations, this is not yet a general rule in Greece, due to the large number and geographical dispersion of stations. Indeed, most of them are still characterised merely through geological descriptions or proxy-based parameters, rather than through in-situ measurements. Considering: 1. the progress made in recent years with sophisticated ground motion models and the need to define region-specific rock conditions based on data, 2. the move towards large open-access strong-motion databases that require detailed site metadata, and 3. that Greek-provenance recordings represent a significant portion of European seismic data, there are many reasons to improve our understanding of site response at these stations. Moreover, it has been shown recently in several regions that even sites considered as rock can exhibit amplification and ground motion variability, which has given rise to more scientific research into the definition of reference sites. For Greece, in-situ-characterisation campaigns for the entire network would impose unattainable time/budget constraints; so, instead, we implement alternative empirical approaches using the recordings themselves, such as the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio technique and its variability. We present examples of 'well-behaved', typical rock sites, and others whose response diverges from what is assumed for their class.</p><p> </p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (5) ◽  
pp. 2063-2072 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxime Lacour ◽  
Norman A. Abrahamson

Abstract A computationally efficient methodology for propagating the epistemic uncertainty in the median ground motion in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis is developed using the polynomial chaos (PC) approach. For this application, the epistemic uncertainty in the median ground motion for a specific scenario is assumed to be lognormally distributed and fully correlated across earthquake scenarios. In the hazard calculation, a single central ground‐motion model (GMM) is used for the median along with the epistemic standard error of the median for each scenario. A set of PC coefficients is computed for each scenario and each test ground‐motion level. The additional computation burden in computing these PC coefficients depends on the order of the approximation but is less than computing the median ground motion from one additional GMM. With the PC method, the mean and fractiles of the hazard due to the epistemic uncertainty distribution of the median ground motion are computed as a postprocess that is very fast computationally. For typical values of the standard deviation of epistemic uncertainty in the median ground motion (<0.2 natural log units), the methodology accurately estimates the epistemic uncertainty distribution of the hazard over the 1%–99% range. This full epistemic range is not well modeled with just a small number of GMM branches uses in the traditional logic‐tree approach. The PC method provides more accuracy, faster computation, and reduced memory requirements than the traditional approach. For large values of the epistemic uncertainty in the median ground motion, a higher order of the PC expansion may be needed to be included to capture the full range of the epistemic uncertainty.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 69-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teraphan Ornthammarath ◽  
Pennung Warnitchai ◽  
Chung-Han Chan ◽  
Yu Wang ◽  
Xuhua Shi ◽  
...  

We present an evaluation of the 2018 Northern Southeast Asia Seismic Hazard Model (NSAHM18) based on a combination of smoothed seismicity, subduction zone, and fault models. The smoothed seismicity is used to model observed distributed seismicity from largely unknown sources in the current study area. In addition, due to a short instrumental earthquake catalog, slip rate and characteristic earthquake magnitudes are incorporated through the fault model. To achieve this objective, the compiled earthquake catalogs and updated active fault databases in this region were reexamined with consistent use of these input parameters. To take into account epistemic uncertainty, logic tree analysis has been implemented incorporating basic quantities such as ground-motion models (GMMs) for three different tectonic regions (shallow active, subduction interface, and subduction intraslab), maximum magnitude, and earthquake magnitude frequency relationships. The seismic hazard results are presented in peak ground acceleration maps at 475- and 2475-year return periods.


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