Engineering-oriented ground-motion model for Israel

This study presents a response-spectral Ground Motion Model (GMM) for Israel, called KYB22 herein and derived with practical applications in mind. This model is based on the former work by Maiti et al. (Bull Seismol Soc Am 111: 2177–2194, 2021), who derived a suite of nine Fourier amplitude spectra GMMs, using both empirical data and calibrated point-source simulations. In this study, a weighted average of the Maiti et al. (Bull Seismol Soc Am 111: 2177–2194, 2021) FAS models is computed and a synthetic database is created. Next, this database is converted to the Response spectral domain using the random vibration theory and a new GMM is regressed, constraining the magnitude and distance scaling on the synthetic response-spectral data. Site scaling is represented by VS30 and is a combination of empirical scaling with other considerations which are discussed in the text. Nonlinear site response is constrained from a global model, as are finite-fault effects, such as hanging-wall, mechanism and top of rupture—which cannot be constrained from the data because it does not contain enough large magnitude data. State-wide hazard is then computed using KYB22, comparing results with other GMM combinations. It is found that the hazard results obtained by using KYB22 as a backbone model are comparable to results obtained using other popular combinations of GMMs in the logic tree. Therefore, we recommend using the new GMM as one of the branches within the ground-motion logic tree when conducting seismic hazard calculations for Israel.