SCEC Award Number 16116 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Proposal (Integration and Theory)
Proposal Title Extension of the SCEC Broadband Platform to Simulation of Strong Ground Motions from Subduction Earthquakes
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Paul Somerville AECOM Jeff Bayless AECOM Mehrdad Hosseini AECOM Andreas Skarlatoudis AECOM
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 6e SCEC Groups CME, EEII, GMP
Report Due Date 03/15/2017 Date Report Submitted 03/15/2017
Project Abstract
 The objective of this project is to develop the software infrastructure for extending the applicability of the SCEC Broadband Strong Ground Motion Simulation Platform (BBP) to subduction earthquakes. This is done by performing a test application of the software to a subduction earthquake.
This project was motivated by a request from Professor Brendon Bradley, co-leader of the New Zealand QuakeCoRE: Centre for Earthquake Resilience, for the PI’s to participate in a project entitled “Validation of Strong Ground Motion Simulations of two Historical New Zealand Subduction Zone Earthquakes on the SCEC Broadband Strong Ground Motion Simulation Platform.” To date, the SCEC BBP has only been developed for use in simulating the strong ground motions of shallow crustal earthquakes. Professor Bradley has expressed the desire that the validations be performed within the framework of the SCEC BBP. That project, which included collaboration with Professor Bradley, has been completed and the report is attached at the end of this report. This project represents a strategic partnership between QuakeCoRE and SCEC that will develop long-lasting mutual benefits for both organizations.
In our validation of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, there is little systematic bias in the prediction of the ground motions in the period range of 1 to 10 seconds. The validation studies that we did for two New Zealand subduction zone earthquakes for the QuakeCoRE Project (see Appendix) indicate that the short-period component of the Graves & Pitarka (2015) simulation method will need to be modified to provide for broadband simulations for subduction earthquakes.
Intellectual Merit This project was motivated by a request from Professor Brendon Bradley, co-leader of the New Zealand QuakeCoRE: Centre for Earthquake Resilience, for the PI’s to participate in a project entitled “Validation of Strong Ground Motion Simulations of two Historical New Zealand Subduction Zone Earthquakes on the SCEC Broadband Strong Ground Motion Simulation Platform.” To date, the SCEC BBP has only been developed for use in simulating the strong ground motions of shallow crustal earthquakes. This project contributes to SCEC research objectives by testing the SCEC BBP with subduction events to identify areas where the methods can be improved, with the end goal of expanding the BBP to ground motion prediction of subduction earthquakes.
Broader Impacts This project has supported the already strong collaboration of the group of scientists who work on and for the SCEC broadband platform, by contributing to the research goals and interacting on a regular basis with scientists (and engineers.) Possible benefits of the activity to society involve the improvement of earthquake simulations, which will eventually be used in seismic design, particularly for near fault ground motions.
Exemplary Figure Figure 4. Goodness-of-fit (GOF) of recorded and simulated response spectra for the period range 0.1-10s for the 2011 Tohoku earthquake simulations on the SCEC Broadband Platform. The red line shows the bias, the light green zone shows the standard deviation, and the dark grey zone shows the 90% confidence interval of the mean.
Linked Publications

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