Abstract
The current state of the practice in performance-based earthquake engineering relies on using ergodic ground motion models (GMMs), which assume that the ground motion variability observed in a global database is the same as the variability in ground motion at a single site-source combination. However, as empirical ground motion databases have grown, it has become clear that there are significant systematic differences, which depend on repeatable effects for a combination of sites and seismic sources in a particular region. These systematic differences do not support the ergodic assumption, which is prompting the transition from ergodic to nonergodic GMMs. In this study, we use the Ridgecrest ground motion database, which has 20,000 + ground motion recordings, to evaluate the performance of ergodic and nonergodic GMMs. The large number of ground motions in the Ridgecrest database allows us to quantify repeatable effects for a relatively small region, considering earthquakes with a range of magnitudes, which has been seldom attempted in previous efforts. In develo** the nonergodic GMMs, we propose a novel approach based on computer graphics to quantify the cell-specific attenuation terms to constrain the path effects. We use the developed ergodic and nonergodic GMMs to evaluate their performance in earthquake scenarios that occurred in the Ridgecrest area by creating GMM-based maps of ground shaking (MGSs) and comparing them with actual MGSs from recorded ground motions. We use the results from MGSs to assess the assumption in nonergodic GMMs, namely that repeatable effects observed in small magnitude earthquakes are correlated with repeatable effects observed in large magnitude earthquakes. Our results show that the nonergodic GMMs provide information on the spatial variation of repeatable effects induced by complex physical processes; they have a lower aleatory variability, consistent with previous studies; they have a better performance for the considered earthquake scenarios in the Ridgecrest area; and the repeatable effects quantified in small magnitude earthquakes improve the estimation of intensity measures (IMs) at larger magnitudes.
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Availability of data and materials
The NGA-West2 ground motion database are available in the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Center website (https://ngawest2.berkeley.edu/). The Ridgecrest ground motion database are available in the USGS website (https://www.strongmotioncenter.org/specialstudies/rekoske_2019ridgecrest/).
Code availability
The code implementing Cohen-Sutherland algorithm for cell-specific attenuation can be acquired by email request to the first author.
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Acknowledgements
This work was partially supported by the Georgia Institute of Technology (Award DE00000701) and Pacific Gas and Electric. We also thank Dr. Norman Abrahamson for inspiring us to work on the development of nonergodic ground motion models and for always being open to discussing technical aspects, which were instrumental in our study. We also thank the U.S. Nonergodic hazard working group for providing feedback and recommendations for our study, in particular we thank Dr. Yousef Bozorgnia, Dr. Nicolas Kuehn, Dr. Grigorios Lavrentiadis, Dr. Maxime Lacour, and Dr. Christine Goulet for the valuable discussions. Finally, we thank the three anonymous reviewers and Dr. Christine Goulet, who provided constructive comments that helped to improve the quality of this study.
Funding
This work was partially supported by the Georgia Institute of Technology (Award DE00000701), and Pacific Gas and Electric.
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Appendix A
Appendix A
PGA MGS generated by ergodic, single-station sigma, and non-ergodic GMMs for an earthquake with \(M_w\) = 6.4
Spatial distribution of residuals between as-recorded PGA values and median predictions from the ergodic, single-station sigma, and non-ergodic GMMs for an earthquake with M = 6.4 (left column) and M = 7.1 (right column)
Spatial distribution of residuals between as-recorded Sa(1s) values and median predictions from the ergodic, single-station sigma, and non-ergodic GMMs for an earthquake with M = 6.4 (left column) and M = 7.1 (right column)
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Liu, C., Macedo, J. & Kottke, A.R. Evaluating the performance of nonergodic ground motion models in the ridgecrest area. Bull Earthquake Eng 21, 5347–5373 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-022-01342-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-022-01342-x