Earthquake site response studies are becoming increasingly common across Canada — particularly in large, urban centres. This is due, in part, to new instrumentation that can be easily used to collect recordings of ground shaking, and new geotechnical methods to map out shear-wave velocity and subsurface geometry. Since 2003, nearly 1,000 microtremor recordings have been collected in southwestern British Columbia. Coverage includes numerous sites on Vancouver Island, greater Victoria, greater Vancouver, and a 10-km stretch of the Sea-to-Sky Highway that links Vancouver to Whistler (site of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games). Single-instrument microtremor recordings were collected to evaluate earthquake site response using the horizontal-to-vertical (H/V) spectral ratio method. These results were used for: (1) comparison at strong-motion instrument sites with earthquake spectral ratios, (2) comparison at sites with macroseismic (earthquake intensity and damage) information, (3) comparison at sites with measured shear-wave velocities (12 seismic cone penetration tests and four spectral analysis of surface wave technique), (4) hazard mapping projects, and (5) investigating soil-structure interaction. Results obtained from these various methods in Victoria are in good agreement. In eastern Canada, where most earthquake damage has been associated with the soft Leda clay layer that overlies the hard Precambrian rocks of the Canadian Shield, studies have focussed on the urban centres of Montreal, Ottawa, and Quebec City. Here, NEHRP (National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program) classification maps are being produced, and significant resonant amplification factors are observed (greater than 50 in some cases). This paper documents earthquake site response studies currently underway in urban centres of Canada, and some of the applications of those studies.
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Cassidy, J.F., Molnar, S. (2009). Recent Earthquake Site Response Studies in Canada. In: Mucciarelli, M., Herak, M., Cassidy, J. (eds) Increasing Seismic Safety by Combining Engineering Technologies and Seismological Data. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9196-4_19
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