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Regional variability in ground motion amplitude in Western Himalaya

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Abstract

Evaluating the variability components of ground motion models and their reduction is important for site-specific hazard assessment. We compared the observed and median-predicted ground motions resulting from recent ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) in the Western Himalayan region to evaluate the performance of ground motion models (GMMs) in a non-ergodic framework. We study two methods to compute the residuals obtained from the observed and predicted ground motions; they are a pooled ordinary least-squares model and a mixed-effects regression model. Comparison of results from both the models shows that the former is more accurate than the latter for describing ground motion residuals and their variability. We analyzed total residuals and their components such as the between-event and within-event residuals for peak ground acceleration (PGA) to investigate the impact of source, path, and site effects on the GMM variability. The total residuals for the GMPE by Ramakrishnan et al. (J Earthquake Eng. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632469.2019.1605318, 2019) are scattered around zero for a wider magnitude and distance range. Their distance-dependence varies with magnitude; they exhibit a scatter around zero for Mw = 6–6.9 in the analyzed distance range 0–1200 km. Between-event residuals do not show clear magnitude dependence; their scatter at larger distances is reduced due to scattering from medium heterogeneities. The within-event residuals show a trend with distance. The standard deviation associated with distribution of within-event residuals is slightly more than that for the between-event residuals, meaning the dominance of within-event variability in the model parameters. The features such as complexity in site effect, alongside regional differences in shear wave speed structure and near-surface attenuation, are not completely captured by the reference GMPE, which needs further investigation with redundant measurements of source, propagation (path), or site effects for site-specific hazard assessments of the region in a fully non-ergodic framework.

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Data availability

The earthquake ground motion data used in this article obtained from the Program for Excellence in Strong Motion Studies (PESMOS) (http://www.pesmos.in/, last accessed March 2015) and the Consortium of Organizations for Strong-Motion Observation Systems (COSMOS) (http://strongmotioncenter.org/vdc) installed by the Department of Earthquake Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IITR). Some of the events are recorded by the recently installed digital network of strong-motion accelerographs (SMAs) operated by the CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI), Hyderabad.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the Director, CSIR-NGRI, for granting permission to publish this research. The authors acknowledge the PESMOS for recorded ground motion data analyzed here. The CSIR-NGRI reference number of the manuscript is Ref. No. NGRI/Lib/2022/Pub-4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR-National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

    N. Subhadra & D. Srinagesh

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India

    S. Padhy

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Nampally Subhadra: planned, performed the computational framework, analyzed data, and writing of the manuscript. Simanchal Padhy: investigation, writing—review and editing. Davuluri Srinagesh: project administration, suggested necessary inputs in the manuscript.

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Correspondence to N. Subhadra.

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The authors received the grant from the project MLP-FBR-0005(MRK) of NGRI funded by Council of Scientific Industrial Research (CSIR) of India.

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Subhadra, N., Padhy, S. & Srinagesh, D. Regional variability in ground motion amplitude in Western Himalaya. J Seismol 27, 455–471 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-023-10144-w

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