Analysis of Uncertainty of Vs30 in Southern California
Publisher –
AGU, 2009.
Authors –
Mayo Thompson*, John N. Louie, Mahesh S. Dhar, Nevada Seismological Laboratory, Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, U.S.A.;
Aasha Pancha, Satish Pullammanappallil, Optim SDS, Reno, Nevada, U.S.A.;
Alan K. Yong, Earthquake Hazards Team, U.S. Geological Survey, Pasadena, California, U.S.A.
Poster! –
Introduction
In the western U.S., the average shear-wave velocity in the upper 30 m (Vs30) is currently the most popular predictor of ground motions in probabilistic models that estimate earthquake hazards. Because the coverage of Vs30 measurements in southern California is sparse, researchers have proposed various methods to predict Vs30 where there are few direct
measurements. The predictions from these various proxies can di ffer greatly from direct measure-ments, re flecting various kinds of uncertainty. The epistemic uncertainty, when reported, is not enough to describe the diff erence. We seek to evaluate various fi rst-order uncertainties of predictions based on publicly available direct measurements.