Site Effect Estimation Using Acceleration Data in Austria

Two site-response estimation techniques based on the spectral ratios are applied in this study. The first method is so-called receiver function technique, which divides the horizontal-component shear-wave spectra by the vertical-component spectrum presented by Lermo (1993). Then we use the technique introduced by Nakamura (1989) for analyzing ambient seismic noise. This method uses the division of the horizontal-component noise spectra by the vertical-component noise spectra and it is also used to identify the fundamental resonant frequency. We employed acceleration data recorded at the Austrian Seismic Network (network code OE) for this study. Since the second technique is based on the noise investigation and requires long data window, only ten strong motion stations with continuous data are therefore utilized in this study. The obtained site amplifications from the two approaches are compared with each other and are also used to the comparisons with the PGA site differences observed by the previous study of PGA attenuation in Austria (Jia and Lenhardt, 2011). Comparisons and discussions are presented for each station site.