SUMMARY: At the 2010 SCEC Annual Meeting, SCEC established a Technical Activity Group (TAG) focused on Ground Motion Simulation Validation (GMSV). The purpose of this TAG is to develop and implement, via collaboration between ground motion modelers and engineering users, testing/rating methodologies for simulated ground motions to be used in engineering applications. An initial planning workshop held in January of 2011 resulted in recommendations for initial efforts to be undertaken by the GMSV TAG. Building on these recommendations, the subsequent GMSV Plenary Session at the 2011 SCEC Annual Meeting resulted in identification of six priority activities/topics for the 2012 SCEC Science Collaboration Plan. As stipulated there, any Principal Investigators funded to work on GMSV-related projects were to become members of the GMSV TAG who would be required to coordinate with each other. To coordinate and discuss the seven GMSV-related SCEC projects funded in 2012, two workshops were convened via this award. The first workshop (in April 2012) coordinated the seven projects before they began in earnest, and also resulted in a discussion of what would become the SCEC Broadband Platform Validation Project. The second workshop (at the 2012 SCEC Annual Meeting) shared progress on some of the 2012 GMSV-related SCEC projects, the Broadband Platform Validation Project, and other GMSV projects. Feedback was obtained on these projects and on priority activities/topics for the 2013 SCEC Science Collaboration Plan. It is important to note that each of the two workshops included participation from both ground motion modelers and engineering users.

Notes from Workshop Discussions

• Distinguish between validation for hazard calculations (where what matters is getting distributions of the intensity measure correct, including joint distributions of multiple intensity measures) and validation for engineering analysis (where what matters is building response, and typically the target intensity measure level that the ground motion should have is specified).
• Make sure there is language linking GMSV to the six main objectives in the science plan, so that proposers understand how to note which science plan objectives their proposal addresses.
• Invite proposals for implementation and/or validation of new components on the Broadband platform (e.g, nonlinear site response).
• Emphasize analysis/estimation of site effects, including nonlinear effects (for GMP-related projects, as well as GMSV-related projects).
• Expand pseudo-dynamic rupture generators, in particular to include super-shear rupture.

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