Development of the NGA-Subduction Database

NGA-Subduction is a large multidisciplinary, multi-year research program to develop database resources and ground motion models (GMMs) for subduction-zone earthquakes. Coordinated by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) and funded by FM Global, the project entails extensive technical interactions among many individuals and organizations from around the world. The ground motion database will include the processed recordings and supporting source, path, and site metadata from Japan, Taiwan, the Pacific Northwest and State of Alaska in the United States, and Central and South America, including Mexico, Peru and Chile. The database spans ~740 earthquakes with magnitudes from 4 to 9 classified as interface, intraslab, or outer-rise events. Data from Japan and Taiwan comprise about 70% and 20% of the recordings, respectively. The database currently includes more than 60,000 three-component recordings, most of which are from digital accelerograms. Finite-fault models have been collected from the literature for about 80 earthquakes. Focal depths range from about 3 to > 600 km. Maximum PGA and PGV are > 2.0 g and > 90 cm/s, respectively. The database includes pseudo-spectral acceleration for eleven damping values between 0.5% and 30%, Fourier amplitude spectra for frequencies from 0.1 to 100 Hz, and significant durations based on Arias Intensity. This paper provides an overview of the ongoing NGA-subduction database development effort.