ESM processing tool users’ manual

The behaviour of the ground surface and of structures subjected to earthquakes can be
estimated analysing the accelerograms of seismic records. The ground motion is strongly
dependent on several factors and the ability to record, characterize and extract the main features
of waveforms is essential to better understand these dependencies. One of the most difficult
steps of this analysis is the waveforms’ processing. Its purpose is the estimation and the removal
of noise in the records, to evaluate reliable ground motion.
In this framework a processing tool fully integrated within the Engineering Strong Motion (ESM)
database was designed [Paolucci et al., 2011; Luzi et al., 2016].
In the last decade the number of waveforms is sharply increased and so is the time it takes to
process them. To solve this issue a possible solution is to broaden the number of qualified people
involved in the processing. The main aim of this tutorial is to teach the largest number of people
how to use the ESM processing tool and to provide some important guidelines for the thresholds
of the parameters to set. In the text a step by step processing routine is depicted with a
description of the purpose for each parameter. In addition, a suite of explanatory examples with
peculiar situations is given.