Development of Regional Strong-Ground Motion Database in the UAE and its applications

Abstract

In collaboration with the National Center of Meteorology (NCM) in Abu Dhabi, strong motions were obtained from over 50 stations mostly in UAE and some neighboring countries. This research endeavors to construct a robust database in the UAE. Utilizing manual and automated ground motion processing techniques, acceleration time series are processed for four different earthquakes in the Middle East region. The data processing involves accepting or rejecting evaluation depending on quality of signal. High and low-pass filters are also applied to attenuate the noise. The pseudo-spectral acceleration (PSA) are computed from 0 – 20 second range. Moreover, the automated processing methods are validated, using the moment magnitude (M) 7.6 2023 Turkey/Syria Earthquake, by comparing with the results from a recently published database. The study develops three databases of ground motion, station and earthquake source. They include metadata about the basic events information, parameters collected from the public data sources. Moreover, it includes station information such as latitude and longitude as well as the distance matrix such as hypocenter, epicenter, and closest distances to the ruptures. The developed strong-ground motion database is utilized to evaluate the existing ground motion prediction equations (GMPE) from Next Generation of Ground-Motion Attenuation Models (NGA)-west2 study for the periods at 0, 0.2, 1 and 3 seconds. The study shows a reasonable agreement that enhances seismic design practices and updates seismic hazard maps specific to the UAE.

Date of Award	18 Dec 2023
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Tadahiro Kishida (Supervisor)