PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLEThis article was downloaded by: [CDL Journals Account]On: 16 July 2009Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 912375050]Publisher Taylor & FrancisInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UKJournal of Earthquake EngineeringPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t741771161Database for Earthquake Strong Motion Studies in ItalyGiuseppe Scasserra ab; Jonathan P. Stewart b; Robert E. Kayen c; Giuseppe Lanzo aa Dip. Ing. Strutturale e Geotecnica, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Roma, Italy b Civil and EnvironmentalEngineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA c Research Civil Engineer,United States Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California, USAOnline Publication Date: 01 July 2009To cite this Article Scasserra, Giuseppe, Stewart, Jonathan P., Kayen, Robert E. and Lanzo, Giuseppe(2009)'Database for EarthquakeStrong Motion Studies in Italy',Journal of Earthquake Engineering,13:6,852 — 881To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13632460802566997URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13632460802566997Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdfThis article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 13:852–881, 2009Copyright ! A.S. Elnashai & N.N. AmbraseysISSN: 1363-2469 print / 1559-808X onlineDOI: 10.1080/13632460802566997Database for Earthquake Strong MotionStudies in ItalyGIUSEPPE SCASSERRA1,2, JONATHAN P. STEWART2,ROBERT E. KAYEN3, and GIUSEPPE LANZO11Dip. Ing. Strutturale e Geotecnica, Universita`di Roma ‘‘La Sapienza’’, Roma, Italy2Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, University of California,Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA3Research Civil Engineer, United States Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California,USAWe describe an Italian database of strong ground motion recordings and databanks delineatingconditions at the instrument sites and characteristics of the seismic sources. The strong motiondatabase consists of 247 corrected recordings from 89 earthquakes and 101 recording stations.Uncorrected recordings were drawn from public web sites and processed on a record-by-record basisusing a procedure utilized in the Next-Generation Attenuation (NGA) project to remove instrumentresonances, minimize noise effects through low- and high-pass filtering, and baseline correction. Thenumber of available uncorrected recordings was reduced by 52% (mostly because of s-triggers) toarrive at the 247 recordings in the database. The site databank includes for every recording site thesurface geology, a measurement or estimate of average shear wave velocity in the upper 30 m (Vs30),and information on instrument housing. Of the 89 sites, 39 have on-site velocity measurements (17 ofwhich were performed as part of this study using SASW techniques). For remaining sites, we estimateVs30based on measurements on similar geologic conditions where available. Where no local velocitymeasurements are available, correlations with surface geology are used. Source parameters aredrawn from databanks maintained (and recently updated) by Istituto Nazionale di Geofisicae Vulcanologia and include hypocenter location and magnitude for small events (M < !5.5) andfinite source parameters for larger events.Keywords Strong Motion; Database; Ground Motion Prediction Equations; Geophysics; DataProcessing1. IntroductionThe characterization of earthquake ground motions for engine ering appli cationsgenerally involves the use of empirical models referred to as ground motionprediction equation s (GMPEs) or attenuation relati ons. GMPEs describe the varia -tion of particular intensity measures (such as p eak acceleration, spe ctral accelera-tion, or duration) with magni tude, site-source distanc e, sit e condition, and otherparameters. A revie w of G MPEs for peak acceleration and s pectral accelerationavailable in the literature prior to 2003 is presented by Douglas [2003a]. The mostrecent GMPEs for crustal earthquakes in active regions were developed as part ofthe Next Generatio n Attenuation (NGA) project [Power et al., 2008].Received 18 February 2008; accepted 20 October 2008.Address correspondence to Jonathan P. Stewart, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Universityof California, Los Angeles, 5731 Boelter Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; E-mail: [email protected] By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 10:52 16 July 2009Be cause most GMPEs ar e empirical, they are dependent on the databases utilizedin their de vel opment. The devel opment of GMPEs requires a database of st rong motionac celerogram s and their intensity me asures, a databank of site conditions for acceler-om eters, and a databank of eart hqu ake source parameters. Most of the availableGMPEs utilize inconsistent dat abases and databanks, in the sense that t he data arede rived from di fferent sources of variable quality. One of the major thru sts of the NGApr oject was to compile consistent strong motion, site, and source databases for thede velopment of GMPEs applicable to shall ow crustal eart hquakes in tectonically activere gions. This consistency took the form, fo r example, of consistent processing of allre cordings, classification of geologic site conditions in unifo rm formats, and theco mpilation of source parameters systematically developed in a uniform format by asingle agency.The NGA GMPEs [Abrahamson and Silva, 2008; Boore and Atkinson, 2008;Campbell and Bozorgnia, 2008; Chiou and Youngs, 2008; Idriss, 2008] are intended tobe applicable to geographically diverse regions—the only