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Earthquake Hazard Prediction Software for South Carolina Considering Local Geology and Seismicity

Description: 

South Carolina is one of the seismically active regions in the eastern United States. The 1886 Charleston earthquake (M_w =7) produced damaging levels of ground shaking, and a repeat of such an earthquake can cause catastrophic damage to infrastructures. Seismic site response analysis is conducted to predict the earthquake hazard level at a site for designing infrastructures. An in-house computer program SCENARIO_PC provides SCDOT engineers with ground motions at the hard rock (V_s = 3400 m/sec) and reference outcrop conditions (V_s = 700 m/sec in the Coastal Plain and V_s = 2500 m/sec in Piedmont) for conducting site response analysis. SCENARIO_PC is currently a DOS-based version that uses old attenuation models for generating synthetic ground motions, primarily based on western United States seismic events.

In this study, SCENARIO_PC is updated into a Windows-based graphical user interface (GUI) software that generates acceleration design response spectra and time histories for any site in SC. The updated program uses the latest Central and Eastern United States Seismic Source Characterization (CEUS-SSC) and Next Generation Attenuation – East (NGA-East) ground-motion models to construct site-specific uniform hazard spectra (UHS) and deaggregation results for hard rock and new reference outcrop conditions in SC. It is configured to use either real earthquake ground motions from any database or generate a synthetic ground motion using the point-source stochastic model. After having seed time histories, performing spectral matching in the time or frequency domain is implemented in the program. It can spectrally match with UHS at all periods or scales to match a specific period of interest. The baseline correction algorithm is implemented to correct any drift error in generated time histories. The software has a graphical interface to view the results, post-process, and can be exported into any standard format. Hence, this comprehensive software package is a cost-effective solution that is useful in making engineers work more efficiently and less prone to errors in performing the site-specific response analysis.

Session: USGS National Seismic Hazard Models: 2023 and Beyond

Type: Oral

Date: 4/18/2023

Presentation Time: 03:00 PM (local time)

Presenting Author: Vishnu Saketh Jella

Student Presenter: Yes

Invited Presentation: 

Authors