NGA-West2 Database

Abstract

The NGA-West2 project database expands on its predecessor to include worldwide ground motion data recorded from shallow crustal earthquakes in active tectonic regimes post-2000 and a set of small-to-moderate-magnitude earthquakes in California between 1998 and 2011. The database includes 21,336 (mostly) three-component records from 599 events. The parameter space covered by the database is M 3.0 to M 7.9, closest distance of 0.05 to 1,533 km, and site time-averaged shear-wave velocity in the top 30 m of V S30 = 94 m/s to 2,100 m/s (although data becomes sparse for distances >400 km and V S30 > 1,200 m/s or <150 m/s). The database includes uniformly processed time series and response spectral ordinates for 111 periods ranging from 0.01 s to 20 s at 11 damping ratios. Ground motions and metadata for source, path, and site conditions were subject to quality checks by ground motion prediction equation developers and topical working groups.