Regional ground‐motion simulation is important for postearthquake seismic damage assessment. Herein, a ground‐motion simulation method using recorded ground motions is proposed. Inverse‐distance‐weighted interpolation of the response spectra is performed to obtain the response spectrum at the target location. Then the ground‐motion time history for the target location is obtained by correcting the nearest‐station records using the continuous wavelet transform. An evaluation measure for the accuracy of the predicted ground motion, that is, the response‐spectrum error, is introduced, and its relationship with the seismic damage of regional buildings is determined via a city‐scale nonlinear time‐history analysis. The response‐spectrum errors under different site conditions, distances, and elevation differences are analyzed. The application conditions for the proposed method are subsequently outlined. The Tsinghua campus is examined as a case study to validate the method. Finally, downtown San Francisco under an Mw 7.0 simulated earthquake on the Hayward fault is selected as an example to demonstrate the proposed method. The proposed method overcomes the difficulties in determining the intrastation ground motions and provides valuable input to postearthquake seismic damage assessment.

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