Uncertainty in Ground-Motion-to-Intensity Conversions Significantly Affects Earthquake Early Warning Alert Regions

Abstract

We examine how the choice of ground-motion-to-intensity conversion equations (GMICEs) in earthquake early warning (EEW) systems affects resulting alert regions. We find that existing GMICEs can underestimate observed shaking at short rupture distances or overestimate the extent of low-intensity shaking. Updated GMICEs that remove these biases would improve the accuracy of alert regions for the ShakeAlert EEW system for the West Coast of the United States. ShakeAlert uses ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs), which calculate spatial distributions of peak ground acceleration (PGA) and peak ground velocity (PGV) from earthquake source estimates, combined with GMICEs to translate GMPE output into modified Mercalli intensity (MMI). We find significant epistemic uncertainty in alert distances; near-source MMI estimates from different GMICEs can differ by over 1 MMI unit, and MMI extents used for public EEW alerts can differ by hundreds of kilometers for larger magnitude earthquakes (M ∼6.5+). We use a catalog of “Did You Feel It?” shaking reports to evaluate how well GMICEs predict observed shaking. Our preferred GMICE is the one that computes MMI using PGV for high intensities and transitions to using PGA for nondamaging intensities. These results motivate updating GMICE relationships more generally, including in ShakeMap applications.