Vertical Ground Motion Model for PGA, PGV, and Linear Response Spectra Using the NGA-West2 Database

Abstract

We summarize the development of the NGA-West2 Bozorgnia-Campbell empirical ground motion model (GMM) for the vertical components of peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), and 5%-damped elastic pseudo-absolute acceleration response spectra (PSA) at vertical periods ranging from 0.01 s to 10 s. In the development of the vertical GMM, similar to our 2014 horizontal GMM, we used the extensive PEER NGA-West2 worldwide database. We consider our new vertical GMM to be valid for shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regions for magnitudes ranging from 3.3 to 7.5–8.5, depending on the style of faulting, and for distances as far as 300 km from the fault.