Evaluating the impact of uncertainty in ground motion forecasts for post-earthquake impact modeling applications

Earthquake Spectra Journal
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Abstract

The US Geological Survey’s (USGS) ShakeMap system provides a rapid characterization of strong ground shaking in areas directly affected by an earthquake. This study focuses on studying the aggregate effects of macroseismic shaking estimates from ShakeMap, expressed in terms of modified Mercalli intensity (MMI), when accounting for the uncertainty in forecasted ground motions. We use a Monte Carlo approach to generate numerous spatially correlated realizations of ground motions by utilizing a combination of circulant embedding and kriging techniques for efficiently handling the correlations. We then assessed the aggregate effects of shaking by looking at bin counts across these realizations. We demonstrate that the aggregate shaking regarding the mean macroseismic intensity estimates (from the ShakeMap output) is a biased representation of the aggregate shaking when shaking uncertainty is included. Incorporating shaking uncertainty can help to improve various downstream earthquake impact applications, such as the USGS Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) overall earthquake fatality distribution or estimates of shaking-induced ground failure impacts from consequential earthquakes.

Publication type Article
Publication Subtype Journal Article
Title Evaluating the impact of uncertainty in ground motion forecasts for post-earthquake impact modeling applications
Series title Earthquake Spectra Journal
DOI 10.1177/87552930241283201
Volume 41
Issue 1
Publication Date October 29, 2024
Year Published 2024
Language English
Publisher Sage Publishing
Contributing office(s) Geologic Hazards Science Center - Seismology / Geomagnetism
Description 23 p.
First page 524
Last page 546
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