Overview and Introduction to Development of Non-Ergodic Earthquake Ground-Motion Models
This paper provides an overview and introduction to the development of non-ergodic ground motion models, GMMs. It is intended for a reader who is familiar with the standard approach for developing ergodic GMMs. It starts with a brief summary of the development of ergodic GMMs and then describes different methods that are used in the development of non-ergodic GMMs with an emphasis on Gaussian Process (GP) regression, as that is currently the method preferred by most researchers contributing in this special issue. Non-ergodic modeling requires the definition of locations for the source and site characterizing the systematic source and site effects; the non-ergodic domain is divided in cells for describing the systematic path effects. Modeling the cell-specific anelastic attenuation as a GP, and considerations on constraints for extrapolation of the non-ergodic GMMs are also discussed. An updated unifying notation for non-ergodic GMMs is also presented, which has been adopted by the authors of this issue.
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