Rapid scenarios and observed intensities

Abstract

After a destructive earthquake, national Governments need to know the approximate amount of damage, the number of casualties, and the financial losses as soon as possible. Rapid scenarios are also used to inform the general public; see the widely used Shakemap package [Wald et al. 1999, 2006] of the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the one modified by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV; National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology), which is reproduced for Figure 1. The general matter of the use of intensities in damage scenarios was discussed in a special session at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Seismological Society of America (http://www.seismosoc.org/meetings/2008/specialsessions.html), and was also discussed in the NIS-1 session of the European Congress in Moscow, in August 2012 (http://www.esc2012-moscow.org/esc_thematicareas.html). The purposes of the present report are to: (i) compare different types of intensities; (ii) check two rapid scenarios of intensity; and (iii) understand whether the KF formula [Sirovich 1996, Sirovich et al. 2009] can be used as a new 'attenuation' relationship to improve rapid scenarios. […]

Keywords

• Ground motion
• Historical seismology
• Seismic risk
• Statistical analysis
• Algorithms and implementation
• Seismological data