Project Title/ID Number Statistical Methods for Attenuation Modeling—1L07a
Start/End Dates 10/1/03 – 3/31/04
Project Leader Robert Youngs (Geomatrix/F)
Team Members

F=faculty; GS=graduate student; US=undergraduate student; PD=post-doc; I=industrial collaborator; O=other

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1. Project Goals/Objectives:

This project is in support of PEER Lifelines project “Next Generation Attenuation Models (NGA)”. NGA is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary project to formulate the next generation of attenuation relations.

The project has three goals:

  1. Develop regression techniques that will address data truncation, uncertain/missing predictor variables and multiple levels of correlation in residuals.
  2. Assess the significance of uncertain/missing predictor variables and multiple levels of correlation in residuals in fitting ground motion attenuation relationships to the strong motion database.
  3. Provide appropriate statistical tools to the NGA developers to assist them in addressing these issues in their model development.

2. Role of this project in supporting PEER’s mission (vision):

The project is to give input to the NGA. The ground motion attenuation relations in NGA will be used for seismic hazard analysis and also will generate the data and models for ground motion used in seismic design codes.

3. Methodology Employed:

Appropriate statistical methods will be identified for addressing the combined effects of uncertainty/missing variables and multiple levels of overlapping correlations in residuals. These methods will then be implemented on a platform suitable for use by the NGA model developers. The identified methods will also be used to test the effects of uncertain/missing variables and multiple levels of overlapping correlation on the results of regression analyses. These tests will be performed using both the NGA recorded ground motion data set (already available through NGA project) and synthetic data sets. The synthetic data sets will be used to examine the ability of regression techniques to identify parameter effects in the presence of ground motion variability, and parameter uncertainty and residual correlation.

4. Brief Description of past year’s accomplishments (Year 6) & more detail on expected Year 7 accomplishments:

This project is started in Year 7. Regression techniques will be developed that will address data truncation, uncertain/missing predictor variables and multiple levels of correlation in residuals. Additionally, the significance of uncertain/missing predictor variables and multiple levels of correlation in residuals will be assessed.

The project also will provide appropriate statistical tools to the NGA developers to assist them in statistical analysis of the recorded ground motions.

5. Other Similar Work Being Conducted Within and Outside PEER and How This Project Differs:

 

6. Plans for Year 8 if project is expected to be continued:

The project is expected to be finalized in Year 7.

7. Describe any actual instances where you are aware your results have been used in industry:

 

8. Expected Milestones & Deliverables:

The final report on this project will be submitted for review on May 1, 2004.

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