Abstract
The ergodic assumption considers the time sampling of ground shaking generated in a given region by successive earthquakes as equivalent to a spatial sampling of observed ground motion across different regions. In such cases the estimated aleatory variability in source, propagation, and site seismic processes in ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) is usually larger than with a non-ergodic approach. With the recently published datasets such as RESORCE for Europe and Middle-East regions, and exploiting algorithms like the non-linear mixed effects regression it became possible to introduce statistically well-constrained regional adjustments to a GMPE, thus ‘partially’ mitigating the impact of the assumption on regional ergodicity. In this study, we quantify the regional differences in the apparent attenuation of high frequency ground motion with distance and in linear site amplification with Vs30, between Italy, Turkey, and rest of the Europe-Middle-East region. With respect to a GMPE without regional adjustments, we obtain up to 10 % reduction in the aleatory variability σ, primarily contributed by a 20 % reduction in the between-station variability. The reduced aleatory variability is translated into an epistemic uncertainty, i.e. a standard error on the regional adjustments which can be accounted for in the hazard assessment through logic-tree branches properly weighted. Furthermore, the between-event variability is reduced by up to 30 % by disregarding in regression the events with empirically estimated moment magnitude. Therefore, we conclude that a further refinement of the aleatory variability could be achieved by choosing a combination of proxies for the site response, and through the homogenization of the magnitude scales across regions.
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Acknowledgments
We are very thankful to John Douglas, and the anonymous reviewer for their insightful remarks and suggestions to improve the manuscript. We also wish to thank Dietrich Stromeyer, Amir Hakimhashemi, Olga-Joan Ktenidou, Sanjay Singh Bora, and colleagues at Section 2.6 of GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences for their invaluable contributions in understanding the mathematics involved, interpretation of our results, and the thorough internal review of the manuscript.
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Kotha, S.R., Bindi, D. & Cotton, F. Partially non-ergodic region specific GMPE for Europe and Middle-East. Bull Earthquake Eng 14, 1245–1263 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-016-9875-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-016-9875-x