Characterization of seismic soil effects

Abstract

It is widely known that local site effects can have a drastic influence on seismic hazards. Consequently, in vulnerable areas such as highly urbanized zones it is a major issue to characterize them. In the present study I characterize the soil effects in several places of Barcelona and Girona cities for the 29th October, Ml = 4:3, earthquake located in Alt Empordà Coast. The soil effect assessment has been estimated using two approaches. In one hand, the soil transfer function and response spectra are obtained from real recordings in rock and soil sites and also from ambient seismic soil measurements. In the other hand, using one dimensional (1D) numerical modelling. These methods provide parameters used to estimate the expected seismic ground motion during earthquakes. Among them, the soil fundamental frequency, the soil transfer function, the response spectra and the macroseismic intensity increment will be analysed in this work