Dr. Chen Gu, assistant professor at Tsinghua U. and ERL/EAPS alum, presents "Near-fault ground motion modeling due to the 2023 M7.8 Kahramanmaras earthquake and impacts on local buildings" at the MIT Earth Resources Laboratory.

"The M7.8 earthquake that occurred on 02/06/2023 had catastrophic effects on cities near the East Anatolia fault (EAF). The maximum PGA measured at the strong motion station TK.2708 reached 1.8g, almost three times the PGA predicted by the regional ground motion model. Several strong motion stations near the EAF with epicenter distance as far as 150 km to the southwest of the earthquake epicenter actually measured huge peak ground acceleration (PGA) larger than 1g. The spectrogram analysis of the near-fault strong motion data shows the directivity effects of the rupture, that explained the surprisingly high near-fault PGA far from the earthquake epicenter. In addition to the rupture effects, the soil layer in Hatay can amplify the ground motion 2-5 times according to previous site effect studies in this region. Using the synthetic acceleration from the dynamic rupture modeling with the consideration of the site effects, we analyzed the impacts of the M7.8 earthquake on local buildings in cities near the EAF. Utilizing a game engine-based workflow for hazard scenario construction, we comprehensively trace the entire hazard progression from the earthquake's inception to the ultimate collapse of buildings."