One of the key challenges in assessing earthquake hazard in Australia is understanding the attenuation of ground-motion through the stable continental crust. There are now a small number of ground-motion models (GMMs) that have been developed specifically to estimate ground-motions from Australian earthquakes. These GMMs, in addition to models developed outside Australia, are considered here for use in the updated national seismic hazard assessment of Australia. An updated and extended suite of ground-motion data from small-to-moderate Australian earthquakes are used to assess the suitability of the candidate models for use in the Australian context. Recorded spectral intensities are compared with those predicted by the GMMs. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are considered for such comparisons. The goodness-of-fit results vary significantly among different GMMs, spectral periods and distance ranges; however, overall, the Australian-specific GMMs seem to perform reasonably well in estimating the level of ground shaking for earthquakes in Australia.
This paper was presented to the 2022 Australian Earthquake Engineering Society (AEES) Conference 24-25 November (https://aees.org.au/aees-conference-2022/)