Updating Spatially Variable Seismic Ground Motion Models

Abstract

A methodology for the updating of stochastic models for the description of seismic ground motions recorded over extended areas is presented. The approach (i) embeds seismic ground motion parameter estimation in a probabilistic framework, and (ii) identifies temporal and spatial seismic ground motion characteristics simultaneously from either smoothed or unsmoothed nonparametric spectral estimates. It is shown that higher values for the coherency are identified when no smoothing is applied to the empirical data. The approach and its findings have a significant impact on the evaluation of parametric spatially variable ground motion models for the seismic response evaluation of lifelines.

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