Validation of Broadband Ground Motion from Dynamic Rupture Simulations: Towards Better Characterizing Seismic Hazard for Engineering Applications

In areas of infrequent seismicity or where geologic structures (e.g., sedimentary basins) complicate seismic wave propagation, earthquake ground motion simulations provide one approach to improving the accuracy of ground motion predictions for seismic hazard analyses. However, most current methods for simulating earthquake ground motions ignore important features of the earthquake rupture and typically employ stochastic approaches at frequencies above ~1 Hz. Here, we worked towards improving methods for simulating earthquake ground motions for seismic hazard applications by forming a group modeling effort that incorporates dynamic features of the earthquake fault and rupture (e.g., through complex fault geometry, stress heterogeneity, etc...) that have been demonstrated from both observations and numerical simulations to affect resulting ground motions.