Macroseismic Intensity Estimation from Instrumental Ground Motion Recordings in the Case of Small and Moderate Vrancea Subcrustal Earthquakes

Abstract

Romania is one of the most seismic-prone countries in Europe due to the periodically occurrence of strong intermediate-depth earthquakes in Vrancea seismogenic zone. The Vrancea area is located beneath the South-Eastern Carpathian Arc bend, at the contact between the East - European plate and the Intra-Alpine and Moesian sub-plates. An intense seismic activity is recorded in the mantle, within a narrow, almost vertical descending volume between 60 and 180 km depth. Earthquakes with magnitudes larger than 5.0 (Mw) and macroseismic effects exceeding V MSK degrees on extended populated area occur in Vrancea seismic zone, with a return period of around 2 years. Besides the extended scientific studies, the near real time estimation of the macroseismic intensity recently became mandatory for the insurance companies to cover some of the losses and damages that earthquakes might cause to houses, belongings, and other buildings. The first approach to obtain intensity values was to develop an online environment for collecting people feedback regarding the effects of earthquakes and for the automatic approximation of the intensity. The automatic intensity estimation code from the online feedback proposed by [1], [2] and adopted by [3] for the Romanian earthquakes was improved and used for this study. Additionally, there were used prediction equations to obtain intensity values from the epicentral intensity, and epicentral and hypocentral distances. Besides the estimation of macroseismic intensities from online people feedback and from attenuation relations, equations for conversion of peak ground acceleration in macroseismic intensity were also required for a rapid evaluation of ground motion effects. In order to avoid the increase of the prediction uncertainties, the data must be selected in such a way that they represent the parameters’ rank for which the prediction will be accomplished and the selected data must be representative for the investigated regions and seismic source. In this paper were developed conversion methods from PGA to macroseismic intensity for moderate intermediate depths earthquakes with 4.5<Mw<6.0. All the studies were realised in the case of Vrancea recent (2014-2019) moderate intermediate depth earthquakes, felt on the extra-Carpathian region.