A Comparison of Nonergodic Ground-Motion Models based on Geographically Weighted Regression and the Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation

Abstract

Different nonergodic Ground-Motion Models based on spatially varying coefficient models are compared for ground-motion data in Italy. The models are based different methodologies: Multi-source geographically weighted regression (Caramenti et al., 2020), and Bayesian hierarchical models estimated with the integrated nested Laplace approximation (Rue et al., 2009). The different models are compared in terms of their predictive performance, their spatial coefficients, and their predictions. Models that include spatial terms perform slightly better than a simple base model that includes only event and station terms, in terms of out-of sample error based on cross-validation. The Bayesian spatial models have slightly lower generalization error, which can be attributed to the fact that they can include random effects for events and stations. The different methodologies give rise to different dependencies of the spatially varying terms on event and station locations, leading to between-model uncertainty in their predictions, which should be accommodated in a nonergodic seismic hazard assessment.