Analysis of ground motion intensity measures for records of the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake

Abstract

Abstract Ground motion intensity measures (GMIM) provide a quantitative metric of the strength of a ground motion with the goal of providing a mapping to the potential damaging effects induced by earthquakes. The potential correlation between GMIM and earthquake damage allows their use in earthquake engineering applications such as (pre-event) seismic hazard/risk assessment and mitigation, and (post-event) damage assessment and resources allocation for disasters response. GMIM are also used for damage prediction in the context of performance-based earthquake engineering and earthquake-resistant design. This paper presents the evaluation of GMIM using strong motion records obtained during the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake. The GMIM studied include peak ground acceleration, peak ground velocity, spectral accelerations, root-mean-square acceleration, Arias intensity, cumulative absolute velocity, Housner spectral intensity, and Araya-Saragoni intensity. The GMIM are evaluated at several spatial locations where ground motion records were measured during the events. Examination of the results show that some of the GMIM showed particularly high values at locations where severe damage was observed after the earthquake. It is also shown that the maximum considered earthquake (MCE) spectra was exceeded at several locations where extensive damage was observed.