Validation of physics-based ground shaking scenarios for empirical fragility studies: the case of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake

Abstract

This paper explores and validates the use of ground shaking scenarios generated via 3D physics-based numerical simulations (PBS) for seismic fragility studies. The 2009 L’Aquila seismic event is selected as case-study application, given the availability of a comprehensive post-earthquake database, gathering observed seismic damages detected on several building typologies representative of the Italian built environment, and of a validated numerical model for the PBS of ground shaking scenarios. Empirical fragility curves are derived as a function of different seismic intensity measures, by taking advantage of an improved statistical technique, overcoming possible uncertainties in the resulting estimates entailed by data aggregation. PBS-based fragility functions are compared to the corresponding sets of curves relying on updated ShakeMaps. The predictive capability of the adopted simulation strategies is then verified in terms of seismic damage scenarios, by respectively coupling PBS- and ShakeMap-based fragility models with the corresponding ground shaking scenarios. Comparison of observed and predicted damage distributions highlights the suitability of PBS for region-specific seismic vulnerability and risk applications.

Engineering validation of BB-SPEEDset, a data set of near-source physics-based simulated accelerograms

“…near-source regions and very soft basin sites), without making use of either linear scaling or of spectral matching, which may alter significantly the physical nature of the input motions and, consequently, the meaningfulness of results; Provide ensembles of input motions for NLTHA of critical structures (e.g. Nuclear Power Plants, see Abell et al, 2018;Castro-Cruz et al, 2021;Smerzini et al, 2023), containing those source-, region-, and site-specific features that may not be included in suite of motions extracted from global ground motion data sets; Better constrain the input definition particularly for: (1) the calibration of both empirical and analytical fragility curves (Rosti et al, 2023;Zhang et al, 2023); (2) spatially variable multi-support excitations for the seismic analysis of infrastructure systems (Smerzini, 2018;Taslimi and Petrone, 2023); (3) specific near-field studies requiring sets of pulse-like ground motion series; (4) region-specific ground motions in large urban areas, including their spatial correlation (e.g. Chen and Baker, 2019;Infantino et al, 2021b;Schiappapietra and Smerzini, 2021).…”

“…Better constrain the input definition particularly for: (1) the calibration of both empirical and analytical fragility curves (Rosti et al, 2023; Zhang et al, 2023); (2) spatially variable multi-support excitations for the seismic analysis of infrastructure systems (Smerzini, 2018; Taslimi and Petrone, 2023); (3) specific near-field studies requiring sets of pulse-like ground motion series; (4) region-specific ground motions in large urban areas, including their spatial correlation (e.g. Chen and Baker, 2019; Infantino et al, 2021b; Schiappapietra and Smerzini, 2021).…”

Synthetic ground motions in heterogeneous geologies: the HEMEW-3D dataset for scientific machine learning

“…Rekoske et al, 2023;Rosti et al, 2023), while high-fidelity simulations for local realistic earthquake scenarios extend up to 10 Hz(Castro-Cruz et al, 2021; De Martin et al, 2021;Heinecke et al, 2014) (and exceptionally up to 18 Hz, such as inFu et al …”