Effect of NGA West-2 Predictive Ground Motion Equations on Loss

Abstract:

Individual Predictive Ground Motion Equations (PGMEs) of the NGA West-2 project have been analyzed for possible differences in loss for certain locations in California. Differences between the individual hazard curves are pronounced in the loss results. The differences are more than a factor of 2 for longer return periods between the Gross losses from the individual PGMEs. Similar differences are also found between the Average Annual Losses from the individual PGMEs. This indicates the difficulty in choosing any one of the PGMEs except using the weighted average of them. Comparisons between losses from the 2008 and 2014 models are also reported.