Scenario source models and strong ground motion for future mega-earthquakes; application to Lima, central Peru

The 2011 moment magnitude (M (sub w) ) 9.0 Tohoku-Oki Japan earthquake occurred in a region where giant megathrust earthquakes were not expected. This earthquake proved the difficulty in assessing seismic hazard by relying mainly on information from historical and instrumental seismicity. To help improve the seismic-hazard assessment for such rare events, we propose a methodology to estimate the slip distribution of future megathrust earthquakes based on a model of interseismic coupling distribution in subduction margins, as well as information of historical earthquakes, and apply the method to the central Peru region, Lima. The slip model obtained from geodetic data represents the large scale features of asperities within the megathrust, which is appropriate for simulation of long-period waves and tsunami modeling. For the simulation of a broadband strong ground motion, we add small scale heterogeneities to the source slip to be able to simulate high frequencies. To achieve this purpose, we propose broadband source models constructed by adding short-wavelength slip distributions obtained from a Von Karman power spectral density function, to the slip model inferred from interseismic geodetic data. Using these slip models and assuming several hypocenter locations, we calculate a set of strong ground motions for Lima and incorporate site effects obtained from micotremors surveys and geotechnical data. Our simulated average pseudospectral accelerations (period 0.3 s) are above 1.5g for wide areas in Lima, which may be critical in terms of damage of low- to midrise masonry and reinforced concrete buildings, which characterize the majority of buildings in Lima.