The objective of this research program is to investigate certain aspects of earthquake strong ground motions that are relevant to engineering research on earthquake hazard reduction. The focus is on the prediction of strong ground motions using geological and geophysical information on the earthquake source, the propagation path, and the local site effects at the location where the motions are recorded. The research addresses two topics: The first is to predict the strong ground motions that would occur as a result of the rupture of the Mojave segment of the San Andreas fault. The second addresses a key issue in strong ground motion prediction; namely the development of effective methods to determine the parameters in proposed earthquake source models. Measured and estimated earthquake-induced strong ground motions are the starting point for engineering research into earthquake hazard mitigation. Some sort of estimate has to be made of the expected ground shaking at a particular site: this research is addressing very promising approaches to improvements on these estimates. Thus this research is expected to make a fundamental contribution to improving the accuracy and effectiveness of earthquake hazard mitigation.
