Strong ground motion computation of the 1992 Roermond earthquake, the Netherlands, from linear methods using locally recorded aftershocks

Abstract

The strong earthquake (ML = 5.8) on April 13, 1992 near Roermond (the Netherlands) is the largest for the area in the last 50 years and has affected a highly urbanized and industrialized region. Unfortunately, no strong motion records were retrieved in the epicentral area. However, a temporary network was installed by the Belgium Royal Observatory a few hours after the mainshock and more than 100 aftershocks were recorded by digital stations. These aftershock records are used to reconstruct the ground motion in the epicentral area during the mainshock. Two different techniques have been considered, namely the empirical Green's function method and the convolution technique. Using the former one, it is shown that, in the epicentral area, peak acceleration reached values between 0.57 and 1.75 m/s2. Acceleration values two times larger are obtained using the deconvolution technique.