Update of the ground motion prediction equations for Italy

Abstract

The Ground Motion Prediction Equations (GMPEs) of Bindi et al. (2011) are now- adays considered as the reference predictive equations for shallow crustal events in Italy. How- ever, the maximum usable magnitude for the hazard assessment is 6.9 and the longest periods (>1s) are not well constrained. In this paper, we discuss a new set of GMPEs for Italy: the general philosophy is to achieve the accuracy of the prediction maintaining the simplicity of the functional form used by Bindi et al (2011). We build up a dataset of Italian waveforms, adding 12 worldwide events with magnitude range 6.1 - 8.0. The dataset encompasses about 5,000 waveforms, resulting in a number of records which is about five times larger than those used by Bindi et al. (2011). The GMPEs are derived for the horizontal component of PGA, PGV and 36 ordinates of acceleration response spectra (5% damping) in the period range 0.01–10s.