@article{ZhuCottonKawaseetal.2022, author = {Zhu, Chuanbin and Cotton, Fabrice and Kawase, Hiroshi and H{\"a}ndel, Annabel and Pilz, Marco and Nakano, Kenichi}, title = {How well can we predict earthquake site response so far?}, series = {Earthquake spectra : the professional journal of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute}, volume = {38}, journal = {Earthquake spectra : the professional journal of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute}, number = {2}, publisher = {Sage Publ.}, address = {Thousand Oaks}, issn = {8755-2930}, doi = {10.1177/87552930211060859}, pages = {1047 -- 1075}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Earthquake site responses or site effects are the modifications of surface geology to seismic waves. How well can we predict the site effects (average over many earthquakes) at individual sites so far? To address this question, we tested and compared the effectiveness of different estimation techniques in predicting the outcrop Fourier site responses separated using the general inversion technique (GIT) from recordings. Techniques being evaluated are (a) the empirical correction to the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio of earthquakes (c-HVSR), (b) one-dimensional ground response analysis (GRA), and (c) the square-root-impedance (SRI) method (also called the quarter-wavelength approach). Our results show that c-HVSR can capture significantly more site-specific features in site responses than both GRA and SRI in the aggregate, especially at relatively high frequencies. c-HVSR achieves a "good match" in spectral shape at similar to 80\%-90\% of 145 testing sites, whereas GRA and SRI fail at most sites. GRA and SRI results have a high level of parametric and/or modeling errors which can be constrained, to some extent, by collecting on-site recordings.}, language = {en} } @article{ZhuCottonKwaketal.2021, author = {Zhu, Chuanbin and Cotton, Fabrice and Kwak, Dong-Youp and Ji, Kun and Kawase, Hiroshi and Pilz, Marco}, title = {Within-site variability in earthquake site response}, series = {Geophysical journal international}, volume = {229}, journal = {Geophysical journal international}, number = {2}, publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0956-540X}, doi = {10.1093/gji/ggab481}, pages = {1268 -- 1281}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The within-site variability in site response is the randomness in site response at a given site from different earthquakes and is treated as aleatory variability in current seismic hazard/risk analyses. In this study, we investigate the single-station variability in linear site response at K-NET and KiK-net stations in Japan using a large number of earthquake recordings. We found that the standard deviation of the horizontal-to-vertical Fourier spectral ratio at individual sites, that is single-station horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) sigma sigma(HV,s), approximates the within-site variability in site response quantified using surface-to-borehole spectral ratios (for oscillator frequencies higher than the site fundamental frequency) or empirical ground-motion models. Based on this finding, we then utilize the single-station HVSR sigma as a convenient tool to study the site-response variability at 697 KiK-net and 1169 K-NET sites. Our results show that at certain frequencies, stiff, rough and shallow sites, as well as small and local events tend to have a higher sigma(HV,s). However, when being averaged over different sites, the single-station HVSR sigma, that is sigma(HV), increases gradually with decreasing frequency. In the frequency range of 0.25-25 Hz, sigma(HV) is centred at 0.23-0.43 in ln scales (a linear scale factor of 1.26-1.54) with one standard deviation of less than 0.1. sigma(HV) is quite stable across different tectonic regions, and we present a constant, as well as earthquake magnitude- and distance-dependent sigma(HV) models.}, language = {en} }