Forecasting macroseismic scenarios through anisotropic attenuation: a Bayesian approach

Abstract

In this work we aim at two objects: quantifying, by a binomial-beta probabilistic model, the uncertainty involved in the assessment of the intensity decay, an ordinal quantity often incorrectly treated as real variable, and, given the finite dimension of the fault, modelling non-symmetric decays but exploiting information collected from previous studies on symmetric cases. To this end we transform the plane so that the ellipse having the fault length as maximum axis is changed into a circle with fixed diameter. We start from an explorative analysis of a set of macroseismic fields representative of the Italian seismicity among which we identify three different decay trends by applying a hierarchical clustering method. Then we focus on the exam of the seismogenic area of Etna volcano where some fault structures are well recognizable as well as the anisotropic trend of the attenuation. As in volcanic zones the seismic attenuation is much quicker than in other zones, we first shrink and then transform the plane so that the decay becomes again symmetric. Following the Bayesian paradigm we update the model parameters and associate the estimated values of the intensity at site with the corresponding locations in the original plane. Backward validation and comparison with the deterministic law are also presented.