Just Released: 2010 PEER Ground Motion Database � Beta Version

The new 2010 PEER Ground Motion Database Beta Version is now available! The 2010 PGMD Beta Version was created to improve the usefulness of the older database released in 2005 and to provide several major enhancements:

  1. A new interactive web-based application now allows engineers and researchers to search, select, download, and scale records to match a target response spectrum.
  2. All ground motion records in the database have been rotated to the fault-normal and fault-parallel directions, and have been flagged for the presence of velocity pulses.
  3. This Beta Version of the database contains earthquake recordings only from regions with shallow crustal seismicity. There are 3182 three-component recordings from over 1000 stations for 104 earthquakes worldwide. In 2011 the database will be updated with additional records and metadata that will more than double the number of records.

target spectrum marching chart

In the new web application the user specifies a target response spectrum and the desired characteristics of the earthquake ground motions in terms of earthquake magnitude, source-to-site distance, and other general characteristics. The target response spectrum can be chosen to comply with the ASCE-05 provisions, to conform to the NGA 2008 models, or to match a user-defined spectrum. Based on these user requirements, the PGMD application then provides a list of acceleration time series from the database that satisfy the user-specified selection criteria. The resulting list of ground motion records is ranked by the degree of similarity to the target response spectrum. At the end of the process the user can download the original time series, the scaled time series, the target response spectra, and the resulting response spectra for any desired earthquake records from this list.

The 2010 PEER Ground Motion Database Beta Version is free to use and is easily accessible at:
peer_ground_motion_database

Visit the website to view and download more information about the database including the users manual, a technical report describing the theory behind the application and its development, and several short video tutorials demonstrating how to use the web application for searching, selecting, and scaling ground motions in the database.

posted December 14, 2010