Ground-motion attenuation from the 1995 Kobe earthquake based on simulations using the hybrid Green's function method

Because of the limited number of strong-motion stations in the Kobe area at the time of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, information about the characteristics of the near-fault ground-motion acceleration in bedrock is sparse. In this study we estimated the near-fault ground motion and derived characteristics of its attenuation on rock, using an hybrid broadband technique and a source model that have been validated against data. We found that at high frequencies the near-fault ground motion produced by the Kobe earthquake was of the same level as that predicted by the empirical attenuation relation for Japanese crustal earthquakes. The areas with the largest peak horizontal acceleration are located at the extremities of the fault and include most of the Kobe city.