Empirical ground-motion prediction equations for northwestern Turkey using the aftershocks of the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake

We present ground motion models for northwestern Turkey using the aftershocks of the Mw 7.4, 1999 Kocaeli earthquake. We consider 4047 velocity and acceleration records for each component of motion, from 528 earthquakes recorded by stations belonging to regional networks. The ground motion models obtained provide peak ground velocity, peak ground acceleration, and spectral accelerations for 8 different frequencies between 1 and 10 Hz. The analysis of the error distribution shows that the record-to-record component of variance is the largest contribution to the standard deviation of the calibrated ground-motion models. Furthermore, a clear dependence of inter-event error on stress drop is observed. The empirical ground-motion prediction equations, derived for both the larger horizontal and vertical components, are valid in the local magnitude range from 0.5 to 5.9, and for hypocentral distances up to 190 km.