Summary of the GK15 Ground‐Motion Prediction Equation for Horizontal PGA and 5% Damped PSA from Shallow Crustal Continental Earthquakes

Abstract

We present a revised ground‐motion prediction equation (GMPE) for computing medians and standard deviations of peak ground acceleration (PGA) and 5% damped pseudospectral acceleration (PSA) response ordinates of the horizontal component of randomly oriented ground motions to be used for seismic‐hazard analyses and engineering applications. This GMPE is derived from the expanded Next Generation Attenuation (NGA)‐West 1 database (see [Data and Resources][1]; Chiou et al. , 2008). The revised model includes an anelastic attenuation term as a function of quality factor ( Q ) to capture regional differences in far‐source (beyond 150 km) attenuation, and a new frequency‐dependent sedimentary‐basin scaling term as a function of depth to the 1.5 km/s shear‐wave velocity isosurface to improve ground‐motion predictions at sites located on deep sedimentary basins. The new Graizer–Kalkan 2015 (GK15) model, developed to be simple, is applicable for the western United States and other similar shallow crustal continental regions in active tectonic environments for earthquakes with moment magnitudes ( M ) 5.0–8.0, distances 0–250 km, average shear‐wave velocities in the upper 30 m ( V S 30) 200–1300 m/s, and spectral periods ( T ) 0.01–5 s. Our aleatory variability model captures interevent (between‐event) variability, which decreases with magnitude and increases with distance. The mixed‐effect residuals analysis reveals that the GK15 has no trend with respect to the independent predictor parameters. Compared to our 2007–2009 GMPE, the PGA values are very similar, whereas spectral ordinates predicted are larger at T <0.2 s and they are smaller at longer periods. [1]: #sec-21