Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Vol. 107, No. 2, pp. 901–911, April 2017, doi: 10.

1785/0120160221

Ground-Motion Prediction Equation for the Chilean Subduction Zone

by Gonzalo A. Montalva, Nicolás Bastías,* and Adrian Rodriguez-Marek

Abstract A ground-motion prediction equation for the horizontal component of

the response spectral values from the Chilean subduction zone is developed. The data-
set contains 3774 recordings from 473 earthquakes, including the latest megathrust
events that occurred in the country (i.e., 2010 Mw 8.8 Maule, 2014 M w 8.1 Iquique,
and 2015 M w 8.3 Illapel). The functional form for the median model follows the pro-
posal by Abrahamson et al. (2016). Site effects are estimated based on V S30 . An addi-
tional model is built using only ground motions associated with measured values of
V S30 and reliable M w estimates (termed the high-quality [HQ] model). The standard
deviation of the HQ model is much lower than the main model, particularly the com-
ponent of the standard deviation that corresponds to site-to-site variability, indicating
that better site characterization can significantly reduce the overall uncertainty in
ground-motion estimation.

Electronic Supplement: Tables of regression coefficients for the high-quality

(HQ) model and 95% confidence intervals for model’s coefficients and MATLAB
implementation of the ground-motion prediction equation (GMPE).

Introduction
Chile is a country with high seismic activity, and most of
this activity is associated with the subduction of the Nazca
plate beneath the South American plate. Subduction earth-
quakes have a strong impact on civil infrastructure and his-
torically caused economic and social losses. Two principal
types of seismicity can be associated with the subduction
mechanism: earthquakes occurring at the contact between
the Nazca and South America plates (interface) and earth-
quakes occurring within the subducted oceanic plate and
related to tensional stresses within the plate (intraplate or
in-slab). Large-magnitude interface earthquakes that struck
Chile in recent years (e.g., 2010 M w 8.8 Maule, 2014 M w 8.1
Iquique, and 2015 Mw 8.3 Illapel) caused economic and life
losses but have also allowed the scientific community to
learn about these rarely recorded events. Among these lessons
is the fact that the lack of a well-constrained model for these
types of events in this region hinders our ability to quantify
and mitigate earthquake hazards.
Ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) are one
of the essential components of probabilistic seismic-hazard
analysis (PSHA). A number of GMPEs have been proposed
for subduction environments based on worldwide data (e.g.,
Youngs et al., 1997; Atkinson and Boore, 2003, 2008;
Abrahamson et al., 2016) and regional data (e.g., Zhao et al.,
*Also at Camino a Chiguayante 5615, Department 404, Chiguayante
4100145, Chile; nbastias@gensis.cl.
2006, for Japan; Lin and Lee, 2008, for Taiwan). A few
GMPEs are available for the Chile subduction zone (Ruiz
and Saragoni, 2005; Boroscheck and Contreras, 2012), but
these models have theoretical shortcomings. For example,
Boroschek and Contreras (2012) consider only 13 events in
the dataset, and site information only differentiates rock from
soil, whereas Ruiz and Saragoni (2005) use epicentral dis-
tance as the distance measure and M s (surface-wave magni-
tude) as the magnitude measure. In fact, these two equations
would not be acceptable for modern PSHA studies, accord-
ing to the exclusion criteria proposed by Bommer et al.
(2010). The proposed GMPE for the Chilean subduction
zone contributes to a better assessment of the seismic haz-
ard in the region and possibly to other subduction zones in
the world.
This article presents a GMPE for the Chilean subduction
zone based on data from events that occurred between 1985
and 2015. Ground-motion records are selected and processed
with a uniform scheme and include interface and in-slab
events. The ground-motion parameters predicted by this
model are the peak ground acceleration (PGA, in g) and 5%
damped pseudoacceleration response spectra (in g) up to a
period of 10 s.
Strong Ground Motion Database
The available strong-motion data in Chile has grown in
parallel with the growth of seismic networks, such as the

901
902
multinational effort Integrated Plate boundary Observatory
Chile (hereafter, IPOC) and networks funded by the Chilean
government only (e.g., Red Nacional de Acelerografos
[RENADIC] and the Seismometer Network; both available
by Centro Sismológico Nacional [CSN], see Data and Re-
sources). The data used to fit the model presented herein are
based on processed records from the flatfile published by
Bastías and Montalva (2015, 2016). The database includes
earthquake-related parameters (i.e., moment and local mag-
nitudes, epicentral coordinates, focal depth, and focal mecha-
nism), classification of earthquakes (i.e., interface, crustal, or
in-slab), source-to-site measures (i.e., azimuth, epicentral,
hypocentral, and closest distances to rupture plane), and site
characterization at each recording station using average
shear-wave velocity in the upper 30 m (V S30 ), topographic
slope, and the site’s natural frequency (f0 ). The event meta-
data are gathered from public seismic catalogs (e.g., Global
Centroid Moment Tensor [CMT]; International Seismologi-
cal Centre [ISC]; CSN). Information about the instrument
type and stations coordinates was obtained from the net-
work operators’ websites (IPOC, RENADIC, and CSN).
The strong ground motion dataset uses first the hypocentral
location (i.e., latitude, longitude, and depth) reported by the
CSN catalog and, if necessary, the location reported by the
ISC catalog. Moment magnitudes and focal mechanisms
were obtained from the CMT catalog when available. How-
ever, when M w was unavailable, relationships between Mw
and ML developed by Bastías and Montalva (2016) were
used.
Each earthquake was classified according to its location
with respect to the trench axis (epicentral coordinates and
focal depth) and, when available, its focal mechanism. The
results of this classification are that, in general, interface
events are associated with reverse-faulting earthquakes and
are located between the Perú–Chile trench and Chile’s coast
with focal depths up to 50 km, and in-slab events are asso-
ciated with normal-faulting earthquakes with focal depths
greater than 50 km. Crustal events and subduction interface
were differentiated according to the event’s focal mecha-
nism; a reverse faulting was associated with interface events.
Earthquakes located between the Perú–Chile trench and
Chile’s coast, shallower than 50 km and associated with
other-than-reverse mechanisms were cataloged as crustal
events. For events without focal mechanism information, we
used a slab subduction model (Hayes et al., 2012) for their
classification. In this case, events for which the hypocenter
location matched the location of the interface were classified
as interface events. The rupture plane for the most significant
events is obtained from the scientific literature. For earth-
quakes without a published rupture plane, the dimensions
of the rupture are estimated using the empirical relationships
proposed by Strasser et al. (2010), and finite-fault distances
are computed by assuming that the centroid reported by
Global CMT is at the center of the rupture plane. The site
conditions at ground-motion stations were parameterized
using V S30 . For some stations, V S30 is measured within this
G. A. Montalva, N. Bastías, and A. Rodriguez-Marek
study (see Bastías and Montalva, 2016), whereas at other
stations, published V S30 values are used. The number of
strong-motion stations with measured V S30 is limited (57
stations, with 744 records); to obtain an inferred V S30 value,
two methodologies are jointly applied (Bastías and Mon-
talva, 2016): the topographic slope of Wald and Allen
(2007) and the use of the site’s predominant period as a
proxy for V S30 (Zhao et al., 2006). A weighted average of
these two methodologies is used. The numbers of stations
characterized following the approach stated above is 178.
The records were processed in a consistent manner,
with each component individually filtered. The purpose of
the processing methodology is to identify the range of fre-
quencies for which the signal dominates over the noise or to
identify the time window of a signal in which noise is not
dominant. The procedure uses a band-pass filter in the fre-
quency domain. To select the low-cut frequency, the S-wave
Fourier spectrum is divided by that of the noise window of
each record component. The ratio is then smoothed using a
Konno–Ohmachi filter to obtain the signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR). The low cutoff frequency for the filter is chosen at
an SNR equal (or greater) to three, whereas the high cutoff
frequency is selected as the minimum value between the
Nyquist frequency and the frequency at which the spectrum
becomes flat (Akkar et al., 2011). The usable period range is
determined for each record as 1.25 times the low-cut corner
frequency used in the record processing, which is the same
criterion used for processing the Next Generation Attenuation-
West2 database (Ancheta et al., 2014). Within the processing,
we ensure that the level of noise present on each of the seismic
records is the same.
Part of the dataset, the high-quality (HQ) data (i.e., mea-
sured V S30 and moment magnitude reported by the Global
CMT catalog) are used to create an alternative model that has
the potential for a better fit. Figure 1 shows both datasets:
entire data and the HQ subset.
The initial data used to perform the regression include
3774 records from 473 earthquakes. This includes 2461
records from 281 interface events and 1313 records from
192 in-slab events. This large database allows an adequate
characterization of the attenuation parameters, magnitude
scaling, and site response. The HQ subset includes 520 re-
cords from 208 earthquakes, including 411 records from
151 interface events and 109 records from 57 in-slab events.
Figure 1 shows the distributions of moment magnitude
against source-to-site distance and against focal depth, seg-
regated by type of seismogenesis (i.e., interplate or in-slab).
The strong ground motion data were obtained from 235 sta-
tions with a V S30 range between 108 and 1951 m=s. The
geometric mean of the horizontal components, for the 5%
damped spectral acceleration, is computed for PGA, and 22
spectral periods between 0.02 and 10 s, using time-domain
integration. The spectral accelerations and metadata used
are freely available from the NEEShub platform (Bastías
and Montalva, 2015).
Ground-Motion Prediction Equation for the Chilean Subduction Zone 903

EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df5;313;721 fevent=depth  θ10  θ11
min
Zh ; 120 − 60Fevent
5

fsite
PGA1000 ; V S30 

EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df6;313;697

8  
V
> θ12 ln V linS − b ln
PGA1000  c
>
>
>
<    n 
V
  b ln PGA1000  c V linS ; if V S30 < V lin
>
>
>
>    
: V V
θ12 ln V linS  b ln V linS ; if V S30 < V lin

6

1000; if V S30 > 1000
V S 
7
V S30 ; if V S30 ≤ 1000
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df7;313;567

8  
>
>
< θ7 θ8 ln ×FFABA ; ifFevent 1
max
R;85
40
fFABA
R    ;
>
>
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;;313;526

: θ15 θ16 ln max
R;100

40 ×F FABA ; ifF event 0
Figure 1. Distribution of records and earthquakes from the
strong ground motion database used for the regression. (a,b) Full
dataset; (c,d) high-quality (HQ) dataset. The color version of this in which μ
Zjθ is the median model, with Z being the matrix
figure is available only in the electronic edition. that contains all explicative variables and θ being the coef-
ficients of the regression; SA is the 5% damped spectral ac-
Functional Form and Regression Methodology celeration or PGA in units of g; M w is the moment magnitude
of the earthquake; Zh is the hypocentral depth in kilometers;
We selected the functional form by Abrahamson et al. R is the source-to-site distance, which is defined as the
(2016) developed for the BC Hydro project. The selection of closest distance to the rupture plane (Rrup ) for interface earth-
the BC Hydro functional form is due to the good fit to a sub- quakes and the hypocentral distance for in-slab earthquakes
set of the data from the Chilean subduction zone used in this (Rhyp ); PGA1000 is the median PGA value for a site with V S30
study (Bastías et al., 2015). This functional form has theo- equal to 1000 m=s; Fevent is a dummy variable that takes the
retical advantages over others because it uses V S30 as site value 1 when the record is from an in-slab earthquake and
explanatory variable and includes nonlinear site response. 0 for interface earthquakes. The fFABA term represents the
The median model is described in the following equations: fore-arc-to-back-arc model scaling, in which fFABA is a
binary variable equal to 1 for back-arc sites and 0 for fore-
μ
Zjθ  ln SA
T
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df1;55;291

arc or unknown sites. The values of coefficients ΔC1 , θ9 , C4 ,

 θ1  fsource  fpath  f event=depth  fsite  fFABA

1
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df2;55;211 fsource  θ4 ΔC1  fmag
Mw 
2

period. Also, the submodel associated with magnitude scaling
θ4
M w −
C1  ΔC1 ; if M w ≤ C1  ΔC1
fmag
Mw  
θ5
M w −
C1  ΔC1 ; if M w > C1  ΔC1
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df3;55;189
V lin , b, c, and n are adopted directly from the BC Hydro
model, as is the back-arc effect. These were kept because
there are no data from back-arc sites and no sufficient data
for the nonlinear site effects.
Another modification of the BC Hydro equation is that in
its original form θ3 –θ5 are fitted for PGA and kept constant for
all other spectral periods; in this work, these are fitted for each
is modified to fit a bilinear behavior (excluding coefficient
θ13 from fmag ). An important assumption of the model is that

3 the nonlinear site behavior should apply to subduction earth-

quakes in the same way that they apply to crustal events
(Walling et al., 2008; Abrahamson et al., 2016).
To fit the empirical data, we use a nonlinear mixed ef-
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df4;55;115

fpath  θ2  θ14 Fevent  θ3
Mw − 7:8 fects regression. Stafford (2014) demonstrated that this meth-
odology has advantages over methods that split the residuals
× ln
R  C4 exp
θ9
M w − 6  θ6 R
4 in a multistage scheme, because failure to include all random
904
Figure 2. Number of data used in the regression segregated by
quality of data. The color version of this figure is available only in
the electronic edition.
effects directly in the regression may produce a bias in the
median of the model. The lme4 package of the statistical
software R developed by Bates et al. (2015) provides an ef-
ficient computational method to manage models fitted using
a nonlinear mixed-effects regression. The total difference
(i.e., residual) between the natural log of the observed spec-
tral acceleration, ln
SAobs , and the median prediction of the
model (i.e., μ
Zjθ is divided into three components. The
average residual for each earthquake e
δBe , the average
event-corrected residual at each station (δS2SS ), and the re-
maining residual, or single-station residual (δW 0 ). This is
expressed as
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;df8;55;355 ln
SAobs   μ
Zjθ  δBe  δS2SS  δW 0 ;
in which the total residual is decomposed into a site-to-site
normally distributed residual term with standard deviation
ϕS2S (δS2Ss ∼ N
0; ϕ2S2S ), a between-earthquake residual
term (δBe ∼ N
0; τ2 ), and single-station (δW 0 ∼ N
0; ϕ2SS )
residual component. The total standard deviation of the
model is given by the square root of the sum of their squares
p
(i.e., σ T  τ2  ϕ2S2S  ϕ2SS ).
A first run of the regression is performed with all data
from the Chile strong ground motion database. The Rosner
(1975, 1983) algorithm is then used to identify outliers in the
intensities for each period. After the removal of the outliers, a
new regression is performed to define the coefficients of the
final model. The model considers no smoothing of coeffi-
cients and deviations, and this task can be done by the hazard
analyst if deemed necessary (Akkar and Bommer, 2010). The
filtering of the data and the removal of outliers imply that the
number of data used to fit the model changes with the period
and with the catalog (i.e., full dataset and HQ). The number
of usable records is shown in Figure 2. No exclusion based
on the number of records per station or per event was used to
select the final dataset. However, about 70% of events have
G. A. Montalva, N. Bastías, and A. Rodriguez-Marek
three or more records, and nearly 60% of stations have three
or more records. The full dataset has a maximum number of
records used in this regression of 3717, and the HQ dataset
has 515 usable records. The final regression forced the co-
efficient θ6 to negative values to avoid unrealistic behavior of
distance attenuation. The number of records used for each
period is presented in Table 1 and Ⓔ Table S1 (available in
the electronic supplement to this article), for the full dataset
and the HQ dataset, respectively.
Ground-Motion Prediction Model
The values of the coefficients for the median spectral
acceleration and standard deviations are presented in Table 1.
The central value of ΔC1 recommended by Abrahamson
et al. (2016) is kept in the proposed model. Table 1 includes
the terms that are kept from the BC Hydro model as well.
Figures 3 and 4 show the mean response spectra predicted
by the proposed model for a site on the fore-arc, with V S30 
300 m=s (National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program
[NEHRP] class D). A MATLAB script for the Chile GMPE
is available in the Ⓔ electronic supplement. The regression
coefficients for the HQ model are provided in Ⓔ Table S1.
Sensitivity Analysis of Regression Coefficients
To define the 95% confidence intervals for all the model
coefficients, a bootstrap analysis is performed. 1000 boot-
strap replications, using datasets with the same number of
records used in the original database, but accepting duplicate
data, allow the same number of regressions. The confidence
intervals are obtained through the bias-corrected percentile
method (Efron and Tibshirani, 1994); these intervals are sum-

8 marized in Ⓔ Table S2. The same intervals for the HQ model
are listed in Ⓔ Table S3, which reflect the higher uncertainty
on the coefficients for this model. This higher uncertainty may
be attributed to the lower number of records.
In addition, a resampling analysis is performed to evalu-
ate the sensitivity of the model’s coefficients to the number of
records in the dataset. Several subsets were created with dif-
ferent sample sizes from 500 to 3500 records with 500 re-
cords intervals; these records were randomly selected. For
each sample size, 100 regressions were performed to obtain
a distribution of each coefficient for each sample size. The
resampling analysis allows the study of the convergence of
statistical tests (e.g., log-likelihood [LLH], p-value) to evalu-
ate ground-motion prediction models, similar to the analysis
by Azarbakht et al. (2014). The random selection of records,
within the resampling analysis, implies that a small sample
size (e.g., 500 records) can lack records of an entire earth-
quake. A large sample size (e.g., 3500) has almost the entire
database included, and this is because repetition is not al-
lowed (i.e., no record can be selected twice). If the values of
the coefficients are strongly affected by a small change in the
size of the ground-motion dataset, then the predicted values
may not be reliable, and the uncertainty would be high. The
 Table 1
Model Coefficients
Number of
Period (s) Data Points θ1 θ4 θ5 θ2 θ3 θ6 θ14 θ10 θ11 θ12 τ ϕS2S ϕSS

0.00 3657 5.87504 0.80277 −0.33487 −1.75360 0.13125 −0.00039 −0.73080 4.53143 0.00567 1.01495 0.47462 0.56436 0.39903
0.02 3657 5.97631 0.84132 −0.28055 −1.77011 0.12246 −0.00039 −0.73869 4.57416 0.00565 1.03738 0.47632 0.57188 0.40261
0.05 3658 7.45297 1.03131 −0.03954 −2.03336 0.08332 0.00000 −0.69849 4.56071 0.00848 1.31034 0.53776 0.57850 0.39720
0.075 3656 8.04760 1.03437 −0.01295 −2.10610 0.08013 −0.00010 −0.65336 4.36639 0.00922 1.48158 0.56188 0.59937 0.38824
0.1 3652 7.76085 1.07565 0.00758 −1.99371 0.07303 −0.00079 −0.55051 3.90923 0.00630 1.65619 0.52707 0.63410 0.38365
0.15 3654 6.17192 1.17061 0.10491 −1.58654 0.05482 −0.00268 −0.42997 3.06236 0.00559 1.93944 0.50642 0.63022 0.39930
0.2 3657 4.83403 1.20531 0.17968 −1.29711 0.05250 −0.00338 −0.53088 3.50113 0.00320 2.08901 0.44619 0.61699 0.41782
0.25 3682 4.42688 1.37607 0.22912 −1.18774 0.02995 −0.00355 −0.58086 3.62816 0.00182 2.25003 0.45040 0.58609 0.43277
0.3 3673 4.57009 1.34991 0.15593 −1.24896 0.03866 −0.00245 −0.66281 3.87634 0.00213 2.28339 0.42549 0.57014 0.44123
0.4 3643 3.98311 1.37954 0.11671 −1.13377 0.04683 −0.00208 −0.72244 4.03388 0.00069 2.31409 0.42945 0.54796 0.45157
0.5 3591 4.86034 1.51950 0.18348 −1.38020 0.03822 −0.00002 −0.79644 4.31418 0.00065 2.33333 0.43334 0.49113 0.45476
0.6 3634 4.67510 1.66663 0.21968 −1.35362 0.02524 0.00000 −0.90120 4.75197 0.00087 2.23422 0.44599 0.49078 0.45219
0.75 3614 4.30862 1.85625 0.29783 −1.30800 0.00995 0.00000 −0.89829 4.70452 −0.00031 2.05217 0.46723 0.48213 0.45553
1 3685 3.57339 1.81217 0.24372 −1.23082 0.03605 0.00000 −0.87331 4.56020 −0.00101 1.63506 0.50143 0.45955 0.43828
1.5 3717 2.92216 2.03469 0.22521 −1.18750 0.02769 −0.00010 −0.94686 4.83343 0.00010 0.69338 0.51633 0.42573 0.42297
2 3648 2.39780 2.04340 0.27383 −1.16319 0.04011 −0.00033 −0.90845 4.59029 0.00109 −0.09762 0.50688 0.40179 0.40377
2.5 3583 1.64148 1.88987 0.18740 −1.06544 0.08310 −0.00121 −0.80518 4.13415 0.00035 −0.34932 0.51465 0.39825 0.38489
3 3525 1.66483 1.90504 0.13268 −1.12678 0.09404 −0.00088 −0.81689 4.18978 0.00073 −0.33270 0.50365 0.38493 0.37384
4 3283 0.90565 1.71178 0.01380 −1.07620 0.13838 −0.00062 −0.87331 4.50907 0.00084 −0.41321 0.45311 0.35579 0.37020
5 3102 0.61234 1.59359 0.06465 −1.13080 0.15259 0.00000 −0.87800 4.56386 0.00068 −0.42395 0.43900 0.34991 0.37674
6 2921 0.32672 1.69184 0.32368 −1.15734 0.12421 0.00000 −0.88436 4.55837 0.00137 −0.38760 0.42084 0.32048 0.37173
7.5 2780 −0.24140 1.71126 0.60252 −1.14070 0.10951 0.00000 −0.98803 5.08282 0.00167 −0.32638 0.41701 0.29895 0.36349
10 2473 −0.96314 1.67160 0.77621 −1.09295 0.11344 0.00000 −1.05008 5.49692 −0.00070 −0.25811 0.38872 0.28454 0.36173
Ground-Motion Prediction Equation for the Chilean Subduction Zone

(continued)
905
 Table 1 (Continued)
906

Period (s) σ θ7 θ8 θ15 θ16 θ9 ΔC1;interface ΔC1;in slab V lin b n c C4 C1

0.00 0.83845 1.0988 −1.420 0.9969 −1.000 0.4 0.200 −0.300 865.1 −1.186 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.02 0.84618 1.0988 −1.420 0.9969 −1.000 0.4 0.200 −0.300 865.1 −1.186 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.05 0.88409 1.2536 −1.650 1.1030 −1.180 0.4 0.200 −0.300 1053.5 −1.346 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.075 0.90867 1.4175 −1.800 1.2732 −1.360 0.4 0.200 −0.300 1085.7 −1.471 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.1 0.90944 1.3997 −1.800 1.3042 −1.360 0.4 0.200 −0.300 1032.5 −1.624 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.15 0.90171 1.3582 −1.690 1.2600 −1.300 0.4 0.200 −0.300 877.6 −1.931 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.2 0.86853 1.1648 −1.490 1.2230 −1.250 0.4 0.200 −0.300 748.2 −2.188 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.25 0.85654 0.9940 −1.300 1.1600 −1.170 0.4 0.200 −0.300 654.3 −2.381 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.3 0.83713 0.8821 −1.180 1.0500 −1.060 0.4 0.200 −0.300 587.1 −2.518 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.4 0.82982 0.7046 −0.980 0.8000 −0.780 0.4 0.144 −0.300 503 −2.657 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.5 0.79737 0.5799 −0.820 0.6620 −0.620 0.4 0.100 −0.300 456.6 −2.669 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.6 0.80265 0.5021 −0.700 0.5800 −0.500 0.4 0.074 −0.300 430.3 −2.599 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
0.75 0.81134 0.3687 −0.540 0.4800 −0.340 0.4 0.042 −0.300 410.5 −2.401 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
1 0.80914 0.1746 −0.340 0.3300 −0.140 0.4 0.000 −0.300 400 −1.955 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
1.5 0.79168 −0.0820 −0.050 0.3100 0.000 0.4 −0.058 −0.300 400 −1.025 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
2 0.76249 −0.2821 0.120 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.100 −0.300 400 −0.299 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
2.5 0.75605 −0.4108 0.250 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.155 −0.300 400 0 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
3 0.73593 −0.4466 0.300 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.200 −0.300 400 0 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
4 0.68480 −0.4344 0.300 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.200 −0.300 400 0 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
5 0.67609 −0.4368 0.300 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.200 −0.300 400 0 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
6 0.64653 −0.4586 0.300 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.200 −0.300 400 0 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
7.5 0.62881 −0.4433 0.300 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.200 −0.300 400 0 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
10 0.60243 −0.4828 0.300 0.3000 0.000 0.4 −0.200 −0.300 400 0 1.18 1.88 10 7.2
G. A. Montalva, N. Bastías, and A. Rodriguez-Marek
Ground-Motion Prediction Equation for the Chilean Subduction Zone 907

Figure 3. Response spectra obtained for a fore-arc site with V S30  300 m=s for an interplate earthquake. PGA, peak ground accel-
eration. The color version of this figure is available only in the electronic edition.

Figure 4. Response spectrum obtained for a fore-arc site with V S30  300 m=s for an in-slab earthquake. The color version of this figure
is available only in the electronic edition.
908
Figure 5. Resampling analysis to evaluate the sensitivity of coefficients θ1 and θ2 for PGA and 0.1 s. Dashed horizontal lines are the
confidence intervals for each coefficient from the bootstrap analysis. (a) and (c) correspond to PGA, and (b) and (d) correspond to spectral
acceleration (SA) (T  0:1 s). The color version of this figure is available only in the electronic edition.
convergence of each coefficient occurs at subsets with at
least 1000 records, but the mean for even the smallest sample
(500 records) is within the 95% confidence interval from the
full dataset (i.e., from the bootstrap analysis). Figure 5 shows
this exercise for coefficients θ1 and θ2 , for which the box-
plots show the mean ± one standard deviation for each sam-
ple size. With larger sample sizes, the standard deviation for
each coefficient decreases, and in fact it would eventually
reach zero with the coefficient taking the model’s value. The
same behavior occurs for the remaining coefficients.
Residual and Uncertainty Analysis
The accuracy of the model with respect to the empirical
data is examined by plotting the independent variables against
the residuals. Figure 6 shows the between-event residual
against moment magnitude, the single-station residual against
source-to-site distance, and the site-to-site residual versus
V S30 . Mean and standard deviations of binned data are com-
puted and shown in the figure. The tick marks on the x axis
define the bin range values used for analysis. After testing all
independent variables, no trends are found. Consequently, the
residual plots lead us to conclude that the regression procedure
is robust and reliable.
For engineering applications in seismic-hazard analyses,
the standard deviations are as important as the median pre-
dictions. The HQ model, fitted only with HQ data, allows the
assessment of the uncertainty in the input variables. The goal
of this model is to remove some of the scatter introduced
by the uncertainty associated with the conversion of local
magnitudes to moment magnitudes and from the inferred
G. A. Montalva, N. Bastías, and A. Rodriguez-Marek
V S30 values. The probability of exceeding any specific inten-
sity value decreases with a decrease in sigma, so another ad-
vantage of this alternative model is its lower variability; this
comes at the cost of better input data (i.e., measured V S30 ), and
a restricted usable distance range (Rrup < 300 km).
The best-characterized event in the dataset is the 2010
Mw 8.8 Maule earthquake, because many of the recording
sites have a measured V S30 value (e.g., Kayen et al., 2014;
Bastías and Montalva, 2016). Figure 7 overlays the records
from this event with the distance attenuation for both models
for an M w 8.8 earthquake and a V S30 value close to the
median of those stations that recorded the Maule event (the
median is 515 m=s). The standard deviations for the HQ
model are listed in Table 2.
To assess the difference in goodness of fit between the
Abrahamson et al. (2016) and the models developed in this
study, we compare the performance of each model using the
LLH methodology proposed by Scherbaum et al. (2009).
This allows a comparison, under an objective scheme, of the
predictive capability of each model for this database. Figure 8
shows the LLH values for the HQ dataset, the Abrahamson
et al. (2016) model, and the ones proposed in this study.
Models developed in this article show better performance
(i.e., lower LLH values). Ⓔ Figure S1 shows a comparison
in terms of distance attenuation.
Comparison of Standard Deviations with Other
Tectonic Regions
Rodriguez-Marek et al. (2013) compared ergodic
p
within-event standard deviations (ϕ with ϕ  ϕ2SS  ϕ2S2S )
Ground-Motion Prediction Equation for the Chilean Subduction Zone
Figure 6. Plots of residual components versus predictive variables. Rows one through four correspond to PGA, SA (T  0:1 s),
SA (T  1 s), and SA (T  10 s). The color version of this figure is available only in the electronic edition.
and event-corrected single-station standard deviations (ϕSS )
for multiple regions, concluding that in particular ϕSS is a
very stable parameter across different tectonic environments.
The same data are used to compare the standard deviations of
the proposed model. Figure 9a shows remarkable agreement
of the proposed model with the parameters obtained from
other regions and tectonic environments. The HQ model has
significantly lower ϕS2S values due to the better-characterized
sites, almost identical τ, and slightly lower ϕSS values. The val-
ues for ϕ are also within the parameters obtained worldwide.
Summary and Conclusions
This article presented a GMPE for Chilean earthquakes
based on a comprehensive database compiled by Bastías and
Montalva (2016). Using the criteria proposed by Bommer
et al. (2010), the range of validity of the proposed GMPE
is for distances up to 300 km; however, distances up to
1000 km show reasonable behavior. For magnitudes, the
range goes from 5.0 to 8.0, in which the bulk of the data lies.
However, events in the Mw 8.0–9.0 bin are some of the
best-characterized events (including the M w 8.8 Maule
909
earthquake); consequently, it is feasible to extend the appli-
cability of the model up to Mw 9. For V S30, the range of
validity goes from 100 to 1000 m=s. In this article, we also
regress for a GMPE using only a HQ subset of the database
(i.e., the HQ model). The validity of the HQ model is re-
stricted to interface events and distances up to 300 km. Both
models predict similar median response over the range of
applicability (see Fig. 7), but the HQ model renders signifi-
cantly lower values of ϕS2S . This reduction is likely due to
the better metadata (V S30 ) for the HQ dataset. Other studies
(Rodriguez-Marek et al., 2013) indicated decreasing ϕSS val-
ues for large magnitudes, which may indicate why the HQ
model, which has a much larger proportion of large M w
events on its dataset, has a slightly lower ϕSS.
The difference between the total intra-event variability
(ϕ) and the single-station event-corrected variability (ϕSS )
is a clear indication that a better constraint on site parameters
reduces the value of ϕS2S , which in turn implies a reduction
in ϕ. These findings are also true for other regions (e.g.,
Thompson and Wald, 2016) in which improved site terms
analysis within the GMPE is needed.
910 G. A. Montalva, N. Bastías, and A. Rodriguez-Marek

Table 2 Data and Resources

High-Quality Model Standard Deviations
All the data used in this work are freely available at
Period (s) ϕSS ϕS2S τ
https://nees.org/resources/13694 (last accessed January
0.00 0.29315 0.35438 0.48274 2017), which has been processed according to Bastías and
0.02 0.29672 0.35919 0.49080
0.05 0.29003 0.38169 0.53613 Montalva (2016). Data sources include Centro Sismologico
0.075 0.27892 0.41023 0.58232 Nacional (CSN, National Seismological Center) available at
0.1 0.28010 0.45716 0.56901 http://evtdb.csn.uchile.cl/ (last accessed January 2017), Inte-
0.15 0.29938 0.42642 0.53998 grated Plate boundary Observatory Chile (IPOC), and from
0.2 0.33550 0.39664 0.46322
0.25 0.32956 0.36564 0.46462 RENADIC from the University of Chile available at http://
0.3 0.33449 0.35375 0.41917 www.renadic.cl/ (last accessed January 2017). For the regres-
0.4 0.36362 0.37225 0.41862 sions, the software R (http://www.R-project.org/, last ac-
0.5 0.37367 0.31389 0.43451 cessed January 2017) was used.
0.6 0.36857 0.29805 0.43404
0.75 0.36698 0.33310 0.45313
1 0.38278 0.36033 0.46525
1.5 0.36307 0.40814 0.42219
2 0.37107 0.37199 0.38592
2.5 0.36636 0.36573 0.38407
3 0.33519 0.39403 0.38146
4 0.33086 0.39148 0.38539
5 0.31169 0.40978 0.40439
6 0.30916 0.38271 0.39921
7.5 0.29010 0.21232 0.41293
10 0.29420 0.28240 0.40111

Figure 8. Log-likelihood (LLH) values for Chilean models and

Abrahamson et al. (2016) ground-motion prediction equation
model for HQ dataset. The color version of this figure is available
only in the electronic edition.

Figure 7. Comparison between models fitted with all data and

with HQ data. Main model mean and standard deviation are in
black, and HQ model is in gray. The Maule earthquake data are
plotted on top of the curves, where solid points are well-character-
ized stations (HQ data). The curves show attenuation with distance Figure 9. Comparison of standard deviation models from other
for M w 8.8 and V S30 value of 500 (m=s). The color version of this tectonic regions and the results of this study. The color version of
figure is available only in the electronic edition. this figure is available only in the electronic edition.
Ground-Motion Prediction Equation for the Chilean Subduction Zone
Acknowledgments
This work was partially funded by Fondo de Fomento al Desarrollo
Científico y Tecnológico (FONDEF) D10E1027 and Comisión Nacional de
Investigación Científica y Tecnológica/Fondo de Financiamiento de Centros
de Investigación en Áreas Prioritarias (CONICYT/FONDAP/15130015), and
this support is greatly acknowledged. We thank the three anonymous reviewers
and Associate Editor John Douglas for their careful and detailed reviews.
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Departamento de Ingeniería Civil
Universidad de Concepción
Edmundo Larenas 219, Casilla 160-C, Correo 3
Concepción 4070409
Chile
gmontalva@udec.cl
nicobastias@udec.cl
(G.A.M., N.B.)
The Charles Edward Via
Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Virginia Tech, 200 Patton Hall
Blacksburg, Virginia 24061
adrianrm@vt.edu
(A.R.-M.)
Manuscript received 8 July 2016;
Published Online 7 February 2017