A database of eastern North America ground motions for the Next Generation Attenuation East project

Abstract

A five-year Next Generation Attenuation (NGA) East project to develop new ground motion prediction equations for stable continental regions (SCRs), including eastern North America (ENA), has begun at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center funded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and the Department of Energy (DOE). As part of a pre-project effort, the NRC has funded the initial development of an ENA database of ground motions similar to the NGA active-tectonic-regions strongmotion database. This initial effort focused on database design and collection of appropriate M≥4 ENA broadband and accelerograph records to populate the database. Ongoing work will focus on adding records from smaller ENA earthquakes and from other SCRs such as Europe, Australia, and India. Currently, horizontal and vertical component records from 26 ENA M≥4 earthquakes from 2000 on have been collected and prepared (instrument response removed, filtering to acceptable-signal band, determining peak and spectral parameter values, quality assurance, etc.) for the database, including the April 18, 2008 M5.2 Mt. Carmel, Illinois mainshock and three M4 aftershocks. Geologic Survey of Canada (GSC) strong motion recordings, previously not available, will also be added as they become available. The additional earthquakes increase the number of ground motion recordings in the 10 - 100 km range, particularly from the Mt. Carmel events and the 2005 M5.0 Riviere du Loup, Quebec, Canada earthquake. Records from soil sites (Vs30 < 1500 m/s) are also being added to the database, which are needed for developing a Vs30 term in NGA East ground motion prediction equations (gmpes). Available source (location, magnitude, focal mechanism, etc.) and site (geology, Vs profile, Vs30, etc.) information is being gathered as part of this effort and included in the ground motion database. The goal is to complete the ENA database and make it available in 2011 followed by an SCR database in 2012. Comparisons of ground motion observations from three recent M5 ENA earthquakes with current gmpes suggest that current gmpes reasonably match M5 observations at short periods, particularly at distances less than 200 km. However, at one second period, current gmpes over predict M5 ground motion observations.

Publication Title

9th US National and 10th Canadian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 2010, Including Papers from the 4th International Tsunami Symposium

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS