application of stochastic shakemaps based on random field of ground shaking

Recent earthquakes have exposed the vulnerability of existing buildings, demonstrated by damage incurred after moderate-to-high magnitude earthquakes. this stresses the need to exploit available data from different sources to develop reliable seismic risk components. with respect to loss assessment analysis, empirical fragility assessment, connectivity analysis etc., accurate estimation of ground-shaking at the location of the infrastructures of interest is as crucial as the accurate evaluation of observed damage for these infrastructures. this implies that explicit consideration of the uncertainties in the prediction of ground shaking leads to more robust results. instead, neglecting the spatial correlation in the ground motion prediction residuals may lead to results that underestimate the actual dispersion expressed by the data. several ground-shaking fields can be generated according to the joint probability distribution of ground-shaking at the location of the infrastructures of interest considering the spatial correlation structure in the ground motion prediction residuals and updated based on the registered ground shaking data.