Predictive performance of current ground motion models for recorded strong motions in 2020 Samos Earthquake

The 2020 M7.0 Samos earthquake had occurred on the north of Samos Island; however, structural damage was observed in İzmir-Bayraklı, which is located approximately 65 km away from the epicenter. Strong ground motions recorded in İzmir Bay showed unique site amplifications, mostly due to the interaction between the basin and deep alluvial deposit response. The objective of this study is to evaluate the predictive performance of current ground motion models (GMMs) for estimating the recorded strong motions, especially the recordings over or near the Bayraklı-Bornova basin. 66 strong motion stations from Turkey with rupture distance (RRUP) < 200 km are used in the residual analysis, considering the ambiguities in the magnitude and depth to the top of the rupture estimations. Event terms of the earthquake for tested GMMs are found to be small and lie within the expected scatter, except for T = 0.5–1.5 s spectral accelerations. Event-specific distance attenuation for RRUP<100 km is consistent with the median predictions of current GMMs; however, the distance scaling for 100 km<RRUP