Abstract:
Ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) play a crucial role for
estimating the seismic hazard in any region using either a deterministic or a probabilistic
approach. Indeed, they represent a reliable and fast tool to predict strong ground
motion, given source and propagation parameters. In this article, we estimated GMPEs
for the South Korea peninsula. GMPEs were computed for peak ground displacement,
peak ground velocity, peak ground acceleration, and spectral accelerations (damping
at 5%) at 13 different periods from 0.055 to 5 s. We analyzed data from 222 earthquakes
recorded at 132 three-component stations of the South Korea Seismic
Network, from 2007 to 2012, with local magnitude ranging between 2.0 and 4.9 and
epicentral distances varying from 1.4 to ∼600 km. A nonlinear mixed effects technique
is used to infer the GMPE coefficients. This technique includes both fixed and
random effects and accounts for both inter- and intraevent dependencies in the data.
Station-specific corrective coefficients were estimated by a statistical approach and
were included in the final ground-motion prediction model. Finally, predictions for
peak ground acceleration and spectral acceleration are compared with observations
recorded for an ML 5.1 earthquake that occurred in 2014, the data for which were
not included in the modeling.