Regional Earthquake Ground Motion Simulations for Southern California With EQSIM: Insights From the 2008 Chino Hills, 2024 Highland Park, and 2021 Carson Earthquakes

This study presents physics‐based, 3D simulations using the EQSIM framework for several earthquakes in the Los Angeles region. The primary objective was to assess the ability of deterministic physics‐based ground motion simulations to reproduce the observed motions from historical events. The selected events included the 5.4 2008 Chino Hills, the 4.4 2024 Highland Park, and the 4.3 2021 Carson events. The simulated motions were evaluated by comparing the recorded and simulated seismograms, as well as the Fourier amplitude spectra, across multiple seismic stations. The SCEC 3D velocity model, CVM‐S4.26.M01, was used to represent the regional geology, and ground motion simulations were carried out with a resolution of up to 5 Hz. The results indicate that the simulated motions captured the recorded motions up to approximately 4 Hz. While careful iterations regarding source parameters and corner frequencies were required, and, for the case of the Highland Park event, some of the near‐source stations had relatively low accuracy, the present study established a positive step toward the utilization of physics‐based simulations in practical applications. The computational efficiencies exhibited by EQSIM, especially on GPU clusters, further supported this assertion, as wall‐clock times of simulations involving more than 10 billion grid points were as low as minutes. This permits ensemble simulations for a considered scenario event so that modeling uncertainties (e.g., source and geology) can be bracketed.