The engineering seismology community has recently recognized the importance of validating the performance of predictive models for seismic hazard by independent observations, yielding a number of studies on the relative performance of ground-motion prediction equations. The validation of intensity prediction equations (IPEs) has attracted less attention. We fill this gap by validating eight Italian IPEs plus one global IPE using five sets of Italian macroseismic intensity data, of which three are prospective and two retrospective to the models. We implemented multiple scoring methods to validate the models and found that the simple score of mean absolute error is sufficient to measure the general model performance. Good models consistently perform well under multiple methods and datasets, showing robustness. Models with physical functional forms are found to perform better. The global IPE performed well for Italian data, implying insignificant regional differences for IPEs. This result encourages grouping intensity data collected from multiple geographic regions, both from the Internet and traditional surveys, into a larger dataset for the use of future model development and validation.

Online Material: Table of selected earthquakes, figure showing data for intensity prediction equation (IPE) evaluation, figures for additional residual analyses, and figures showing evaluations based on other performance metrics.

You do not have access to this content, please speak to your institutional administrator if you feel you should have access.