HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text (PDF) References Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Rhoades, D. A. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Estimation of attenuation relations for strong-motion data allowing for individual earthquake magnitude uncertainties

Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences, P.O. Box 30-368, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

Abstract

Standard errors of earthquake magnitudes are routinely calculated and vary appreciably between earthquakes. However, the uncertainties of magnitude determination are usually ignored in regression models of strong ground motion as a function of magnitude and distance from the earthquake source. This practice has the potential to bias estimates of strong ground motion. A method is given for taking account of the uncertainty of each magnitude determination in fitting such models. It extends previous methods in which the error variance is partitioned into between-earthquake and within-earthquake components. It allows for further decomposition of the between-earthquake component into a part attributable to magnitude uncertainties and a part attributable to other causes.

The method has been applied to the well-known attenuation data of Joyner and Boore (1981). The M_w determinations in this dataset fall into two subsets with distinctly different levels of precision, namely, those determined directly and those inferred from values of M_L. It is shown that most of the between-earthquake component of variance can be attributed to the relatively low precision of the magnitudes in the latter subset.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. J. Bommer, P. J. Stafford, J. E. Alarcon, and S. Akkar The Influence of Magnitude Range on Empirical Ground-Motion Prediction Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, December 1, 2007; 97(6): 2152 - 2170. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				Statistical Estimation of the Efficiency of Earthquake Prediction Under Uncertain Identification of Target Events Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, April 1, 2000; 90(2): 324 - 333.