Testing Ground-Motion Prediction Equations against Moderate Magnitude Earthquake Data Recorded in Korea

ABSTRACT The selection of ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) to perform seismic hazard assessments is challenging for stable continental regions that lack a sufficient number of recordings. In this study, we implement various ranking methods to test the efficiencies of a wide range of GMPEs against the recordings from three of the largest magnitude inland earthquakes that occurred in the Korean Peninsula, which belongs to an intraplate region with low seismicity. In this context, we select a total of 14 GMPEs developed for active shallow crustal zones (Next Generation Attenuation-West2 [NGA-West2] project), stable continental regions, and Korea. Three statistical approaches, including the classical residual, log-likelihood (LLH), and Euclidean distance-based ranking (EDR) methods, are used to evaluate the performance of the GMPEs. The residual analyses show that for the very short spectral period (T≤0.1 s), regionally developed GMPEs perform the best, whereas the NGA-West2 GMPEs outperform other equations for short (0.2≤T≤0.5 s) and medium to long periods (T≥0.75 s). The LLH approach is shown to favor a stable continental region GMPE that has the highest standard deviation. The EDR method, which can account for both aleatory uncertainties and model bias, is found to favor the NGA-West2 and Korean GMPEs. NGA-West2 GMPEs show the lowest model bias, whereas the Korean GMPEs exhibit the lowest residual bias. Five GMPEs selected based on the EDR method are recommended for a probabilistic seismic hazard analysis in Korea. For deterministic hazard assessment, using the Korean GMPEs for the very short spectral period and NGA-West2 GMPEs for short and medium to long periods is recommended. Overall, the stable continental region GMPEs are demonstrated to perform poorly when tested against the earthquakes recorded in Korea.