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PRJ-3031 | A DesignSafe Ground Motion Database: time series, engineering metrics, and site metadata
Cite This Data:
Ji, C., A. Cabas, A. Kottke, M. Pilz, J. Macedo, C. Liu (2022). A DesignSafe Ground Motion Database: time series, engineering metrics, and site metadata [Version 2]. DesignSafe-CI. https://doi.org/10.17603/ds2-syc5-nk92

Authors; ; ; ; ;
Data Type(s)Database
Natural Hazard Type(s)Earthquake
Event(s)
test | test | 2022-10-10 ― 2022-10-10 | Lat test long test
KeywordsGround motion, time series, response spectrum, effective amplitude spectrum, California
DOI10.17603/ds2-syc5-nk92
License
 Open Data Commons Attribution
Version
2
Description:

The DesignSafe ground motion database currently consists of 269,300 ground motions observed from 2,582 earthquakes that occurred in California and its surroundings between 1999 and 2021. The event information (e.g., magnitude, focal depth, and time) is queried from the USGS Comprehensive Catalog (ComCat; last accessed in January 2022), and only events with magnitudes between 3.2 and 7.2 and focal depths less than 40 km are included. A Python toolkit for signal processing developed by USGS, called gmprocess (Hearne et al. 2019, doi: 10.5066/P9ANQXN3), is implemented to retrieve and process a large number of ground motions automatically and consistently. Commonly used ground motion intensity measures (IMs) such as 5%-damped spectral accelerations and duration metrics are computed. The unprocessed and processed ground motions, and important intermediate results are saved as Adaptable Seismic Data Format (ASDF) files per event. Additional screenings are performed to ensure the quality of processed ground motions, such as the identification of multiple wave-train arrivals. Moreover, this continuously expanding ground motion database also includes a compilation of available site parameters for California (e.g., the time-averaged shear-wave velocity for the top 30 m, Vs30) from various data providers (e.g., UCLA and USGS). This database, to authors’ knowledge, also provides for the first time, estimates of the site-specific component of the high-frequency spectral decay parameter kappa (Anderson and Hough, 1984), which is known as kappa_0. A Jupyter Notebook with a Graphic User Interface (GUI) is provided to guide users in the search for the desired ground motions, and tutorials (written in Jupyter Notebook) are provided to help users get started with ASDF files. More detailed information about ground motion processing, quality screening, and site metadata are available in the accompanying data paper. This database is expected to be updated as new, relevant events take place not only in California, but in other regions (e.g., Nevada and Arizona). Authors acknowledge the financial support of Pacific Gas & Electricity for this work, and the guidance provided by Dr. Eric Thompson from USGS in the implementation of gmprocess.

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