BRIDGING THE GAP: A SOFTWARE TOOL FOR EFFICIENT GROUND MOTION RECORD SELECTION IN EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING

With the significant advancements in computational power over recent decades, nonlinear response history analysis has become more prevalent in seismic design and assessment. A critical step in these applications is the selection and scaling of appropriate ground motion records. However, state-of-the-art record selection procedures are rarely employed by engineers due to the lack of user-friendly and computationally efficient software tools. To address these challenges, a user interface (UI)-based software for ground motion record selection is introduced. In addition to the traditional building code-compliant approaches, the software integrates the ground motion conditional intensity measure (GCIM) framework to select records from harmonised databases, such as the PEER NGA-West2, and to provide corresponding scale factors. This approach allows for a combined consideration of any number of ground motion intensity measures through cross-correlation matrices. Furthermore, the multiple causal earthquakes and ground motion prediction models (GMPEs) can be incorporated, as done in the probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA). The application of the tool is demonstrated using a generalised GMPE to facilitate efficient record selection. The UI is designed for ease of use allowing flexibility for users to switch between the different methods of selection and retention of input and output data. The tool supports the selection of both horizontal and vertical ground motion components. A case study is presented comparing the performance of the conditional and unconditional selection methods, with results validated through hazard consistency checks.