Journal of Seismology (2006) 10: 91–103

DOI: 10.1007/s10950-005-9003-x 
C Springer 2005

Hybrid stochastic finite fault modeling of 2003, M6.5, Bam earthquake (Iran)

Dariush Motazedian∗ & Aliakbar Moinfar

Department of Earth Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, K1S5B6, Canada, (∗ Author for
coresspondance: e-mail: dariush@ccs.carleton.ca)

Received 15 November 2004; accepted 18 October 2005

Key words: Bam earthquake, ground motion simulation, near-source effects, seismology, stochastic and hybrid
earthquake fault modeling

Abstract
Accelerographic time series of the M∗ 6.5 Bam (Iran) earthquake of December 26, 2003, are used to calibrate the
source and propagation path characteristics based on a hybrid stochastic approach, which includes stochastic finite
fault and analytical modeling. Estimation of source characteristics is based on the calibration of finite-fault modeling
to near-source observed time series, while propagation characteristics are estimated using far-field recorded ones.
The distance-dependent Kappa factor is obtained from the slope of smoothed amplitude of acceleration Fourier
spectrum at higher frequencies. The estimated zero-distance Kappa value is 0.06. Calibration based on near-source
time series indicates a stress drop of 130 bars for the Bam earthquake. The strong impulsive long-period motion,
recorded at the only near-source station, is modeled using analytical modeling of Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou
(2003).

Introduction fault. The horizontal components of the recoded ac-

The M∗ 6.5 Bam earthquake of December 26, 2003 oc-
curred in south-east Iran with a death toll of approx-
imately 35,000 people. This earthquake was recorded
at 23 Iranian accelerographic strong motion stations
of the BHRC (Building and Housing Research Centre,
2004) as shown in Figure 1 and Table 1.
In terms of data processing, the window of strongest
shaking (shear window plus direct, reflected and re-
fracted phases) was selected for each record, and a 5%
cosine taper was applied to each end of the window. The
Fourier spectrum of acceleration was determined and
corrected for instrument response. The spectra were
smoothed and tabulated over frequencies from 0.1 to
20 Hz, where available. Since we are dealing with a
long period impulsive behavior (will be discussed later)
we left the frequency content of the spectrum intact,
over frequencies from 0.1 to 20 Hz.
A strong impulsive long-period motion is observed
on the near-source accelerograms of BAM station,
which is located in less than 1 km away from the
celeration time series at BAM station and their cal-
culated velocity time series are shown in Figures 2a–
d. Similarly, this impulsive long-period behavior has
previously been observed at stations near their respec-
tive faults for other large events (e.g. 1966 Parkfield,
California, station C02; 1971 San Fernando, California,
PCD station; 1992, Landers, California, station LUC;
1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan, stations TCU068 and TCU052).
Several studies have aimed to characterize the phe-
nomenon (e.g., Archuleta and Frazier, 1978; Campillo
et al., 1989; Abrahamson and Silva, 1997; Somerville
et al., 1997; Papageorgiou, 1998; Somerville, 1998,
2000; Abrahamson, 2001; Mavroeidis and Papageor-
giou, 2002, 2003; Hisada and Bielak, 2003).
Although the physics of this impulsive behavior is
not clear yet, but it seems these pulses may be generated
by two phenomena; rupture directivity and permanent
translation effects. Permanent translation effects are
due to tectonic deformations in the very near-source,
called “fling step” by Abrahamson (2001). The fling
effects are dominant in the slip direction in the vicinity
92
Figure 1. Location of BHRC accelerographic strong motion stations that recorded Bam earthquake. The station BAM is located in less than
1 km from the surface expression of the fault.
of the surface expression of the fault. Fling effects ex-
hibit long-period pulses and permanent static offsets
in the direction of the fault slip in contrast to directiv-
ity effects, which are dominated by long-period pulses
in the direction normal to the fault plane (i.e. Aki,
1968; Archuleta and Hartzell, 1981; Somerville et al.,
1997). When the fault rupture reaches the free surface,
the fault slip and the subsequent ground motions are
strongly amplified (e.g., Archuleta and Frazier, 1978).
The fling effects are prominent only in the vicinity of
the fault while the directivity effects attenuate much
more slowly and are expressed in far field. Also, more
importantly, when an observation point is located above
a buried fault, the medium remains continuous, and thus
cannot “fling” (Hisada and Bielak, 2003). Directivity
effects are dominant in the fault-normal direction, espe-
cially in the direction of rupture, not only for a surface
fault, but also for a buried fault. Although the fling ef-
fect is not always present in the very near fault record,
the combination of fling and directivity can produce
strong impulses, which may have destructive effects in
the vicinity of the surface faulting. This probably ex-
plains the direction of the maximum velocity recorded
at BAM station, as shown in Figure 2.
Hybrid stochastic modeling is used to simulate ac-
celeration and velocity time series from a calibrated
set of input parameters by comparison of the simulated
records with observations. Hybrid stochastic model-
ing includes stochastic finite fault modeling, as well
as analytical modeling using the mathematical model
of Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou (2003) to incorpo-
rate the observed impulsive behavior of near-source
records.
The hybrid stochastic modeling is based on a com-
bination of stochastic finite fault, using dynamic cor-
ner frequency (Motazedian, 2002; Motazedian and
Atkinson, 2005), and analytical methods (Mavroeidis
and Papageorgiou, 2003). Although stochastic finite
fault modeling based on dynamic corner frequency is
able to produce acceleration time series with relative
large amplitude of low frequencies, inclusion of an-
alytical modeling of long-period pulses, substantially
increases the power of waveform simulations to model
broadband time histories over a wide range of fre-
quencies. Hybrid stochastic finite fault modeling has
two consecutive parts. First an acceleration time se-
ries is simulated based on stochastic finite fault mod-
eling. Then, an analytical model is used, if needed, to
model impulsive long-period behavior for near-source
records. The stochastic and analytical parts of hybrid
stochastic modeling are described in the following
sections.
The purpose of this article is to calibrate the path
and source parameters of the Bam earthquake, such
as anelastic attenuation and stress drop, using stochas-
tic finite fault modeling, and to model the observed
 93

Table 1. BHRC Accelerographic Records used in this study. directivity, can profoundly influence the amplitudes,
frequency content, and duration of ground motion. Fi-
Corrected PGA (cm/s/s)
Station Station Distancea nite fault modeling has been an important tool for
name code (km) Rec. #b L(N-S) T(E-W) Vertical predicting ground motion near the epicenters of large
earthquakes (Hartzel, 1978; Irikura, 1983; Joyner and
Bam BAM <1 3168/02 780 621 990 Boore, 1986; Heaton and Hartzel, 1986; Somerville
Abaragh ABR 49 3176/01 164 106 83
et al., 1991; Tumarkin and Archuleta, 1994; Zeng
Mohamad MAM 49 3162/01 121 70 69
Abad
et al., 1994; Beresnev and Atkinson, 1998a, 1998b;
Jiroft JIR 76 3170/02 40 28 31
Motazedian, 2002; Motazedian and Atkinson, 2005).
Andoohjerd ANJ 139 3164 31 33 14 In the stochastic approach of finite fault modeling a
Sirch SRC 146 3161 30 29 14 large fault is divided into N subfaults and each subfault
Golbaf GBF 107 3155/02 30 29 13 is considered as a point source. The ground motions
Jooshan JSH 136 3156 25 36 17 of subfaults, calculated by the stochastic point-source
Chesmeh CMZ 192 3169 23 11 9 method, are summed with an appropriate delay time,
sabz which is related to the distance between each subfault
Qaleh ganj GLG 181 3163 21 24 13 and the observation point, in the time domain to ob-
Shahdad SDD 160 3165 20 13 8
tain the ground motion acceleration as rupture spreads
Nosrat NST 178 3160 19 24 13
Abad
radially from the hypocenter. The approach of stochas-
Kerman KER02 181 3175 19 30 8
tic point source model is to generate a transient time
Kerman KER01 184 3157 18 25 9 series that has a stochastic character, and whose spec-
Rayen RYN 104 3167/02 16 14 15 trum matches a specified desired amplitude spectrum
Bardsir BDS 195 3172 14 10 5 (Boore, 1983). First, a window is applied to a time
Laleh Zar LZR 157 3180 13 12 8 series of Gaussian noise with zero mean and unit vari-
Mahan MHN 149 3159 12 13 8 ance. The windowed time series is transformed to the
Ravar RVR 284 3173 12 12 6 frequency domain and the amplitude spectrum of the
Zarand ZRN 257 3187 12 12 6 random time series is multiplied by the target spec-
Kahnooj KAH 143 3166 11 11 8 trum. Transformation back to the time domain results
Balvard BLV 226 3154 10 10 3 in a stochastic time series whose amplitude spectrum
Khorjand KJA 210 3174/01 7 12 6
is on average the same as the target spectrum. In ex-
a
Distance is the closest distance to the fault plane. tending this method to finite faults, the point-source
b
All recorded by SSA-2 Accelerometer. Fourier spectrum of ground motion is used to describe
the radiation for each of the subfaults that make up the
impulsive behavior at near-source BAM station by fault rupture plane.
analytical approach introduced by Mavroeidis and The acceleration spectrum for the i j th subfault (i j th
Papageorgiou (2003). This calibration is done based on subfault refer to the subfault at i th row and j th column
the analysis of trend of residuals versus distance and on the fault plane) at a distance Ri j can be modeled
frequency. We calculated residuals for each observed as a point source with an ω2 shape (Aki, 1967; Brune,
record at each frequency, where the residual is defined 1970, 1971; Boore 1983). The acceleration spectrum of
as log of observed PSA – log of predicted PSA (where the shear waves of the i j th subfault, Ai j (f), is described
PSA is the horizontal-component 5% damped pseudo after Motazedian and Atkinson (2005) by:
acceleration). The symmetric distribution of residuals
Ai j ( f )
around zero-line without any specific trend is consid-
ered as an indicator of good agreement between simu- (2π f )2 −π f κ0
−π f Ri j 1
= C M0i j Hi j   2  e e Qβ (1)
lated and observed time series. f Ri j
1 + f0

Stochastic finite fault modeling based
on dynamic corner frequency
The effects of a large earthquake fault, including ge-
ometry, heterogeneity of slip on the fault plane and
where M0i j, f0i j and Ri j are the i j th subfault seismic
moment, corner frequency and distance from the ob-
servation point, respectively. Hi j is a scaling factor that
we apply to conserve the energy of high-frequency
spectral level of subfaults (Motazedian and Atkinson,
94

Figure 2. Horizontal component of the recorded acceleration time series (a and c) by near-source BAM station, and their calculated velocity
time series (b and d). Velocity time series have been calculated from the recorded accelerograms.

2005). The constant C = θϕ F V /(4πρβ 3 ), where θ ϕ
is radiation pattern (average value of 0.55 for shear
waves), F is free surface amplification, V is partition
onto two horizontal components, ρ is density, and β
is shear wave velocity. Generally, F and V are con-
sidered 2 and 0.71, respectively (see Boore, 1983, for
more details). The term exp(−πfκ 0 ) is a high cut fil-
ter to model zero-distance “kappa” effects: this is the
commonly-observed rapid spectral decay at high fre-
subfaults, σ is stress drop in bars, and β is in km/s.
For t = tend , the number of ruptured subfaults, N R (t =
tend ) = N . The corner frequency at the end of rupture is
f oi j (tend ) = 4.9 × 106 β( σ/M0 )1/3 which leads us to
f0i j (tend ) = f0 or the corner frequency of the entire fault.
Thus the lower limit of the dynamic corner frequency
is the corner frequency of the entire fault. The scaling
factor for i j th , Hi j , which conserves the total radiated
energy of subfaults at high frequencies is given by
quencies (Anderson and Hough, 1984). The quality ⎧  

f2 2 ⎫1/2
factor, Q(f), is inversely related to anelastic attenua- ⎪
⎪   ⎪
⎪
tion. The implied 1/R geometric attenuation term is ⎨ f
1+ ff
2
⎬
Hi j = N   0
 (3)
applicable for body-wave spreading in a whole space. ⎪
⎪ f2 2 ⎪
⎪
The corner frequency is treated as a dynamic pa- ⎩ f 1+( f )2
f
⎭
0i j

rameter that decreases with time as the rupture grows

larger (Motazedian and Atkinson, 2005). The corner In equation (3), sums are over frequency of the spec-
frequency of the i j th subfault, f0i j (t), is defined as a trum for the i j th subfault. The moment of each subfault
function of N R (t), the cumulative number of ruptured is controlled by the ratio of its area to the area of the
subfaults at time t: main fault (M0i j = M0 /N). If the subfaults are not identi-
  cal we can express the seismic moment of i j th subfault,
4.9 × 106 β σ 1/3
f 0i j = (2) calculated based on its slip weight as follows:
N R (t)1/3 M0 ave

where M0ave = M0 /N is the average seismic moment M0 Si j

M0i j = nl nw , (4)
of subfaults in dyne-cm, N is the total number of l=1 k=1 Skl

where Si j is the relative slip weight of the i j th subfault
(see Beresnev and Atkinson, 1998a,b; Motazedian and
Atkinson 2005). nl and nw are numbers of rows and
columns on the fault plane, respectively (N = nl×nw).
The calculated seismic moment by (equation (4)) is
used to obtain the actual slip of each subfault, then, the
average slip, by:
1 nl 
nw
Saverage = Si j
N j=1 j=1
1 nl 
nw
1 × 10−22 M0i j
= (5)
N j=1 j=1 ρβ 2 × Areai j
where Areai j is the area of the i j th subfault (Beresnev
and Atkinson, 1998a). In actual earthquake ruptures,
the slip may only be occurring on a part of the fault at
any specific time. Consider the case of a long fault as
shown in Figure 3a. When a subfault ruptures, the total
ruptured area contributes to the frequency content of
the radiated wave from the rupturing subfault. In this
kind of modelling a subfault will continue to slide until
the rupture front has stopped at the end of the fault. By
Figure 3. In (a) when a subfault ruptures, the total ruptured area contributes to the frequency content of the radiated wave from the rupturing
subfault. In (b) a wave front has a tail which includes the pulsing subfaults and those subfaults that are still sliding. In (b), the passive area (white
cells) should not affect the frequency content of the active subfault in red.
95
contrast, in the case when the rupture front reaches a
cell that is far away from the hypocenter, the hypocenter
cell may no longer be active. In this model, the passive
area should have no effect on the frequency content of
the distant subfault. Figure 3b illustrates this concept
using a white area for the now passive cells that do not
effect the dynamic corner frequency.
N R in equation (2) is the cumulative number of ac-
tive subfaults, which in the case of Figure 3a is the
number of ruptured subfaults, but in the case Figure 3b,
is the number of pulsing subfaults, which would in-
crease with time at the beginning of rupture but be-
come constant after a period of time. This behavior has
been implemented in EXSIM through equation (2). The
dynamic corner frequency decreases with time at the
beginning of rupture, then becomes constant. The be-
havior is controlled through a parameter that gives the
maximum active pulsing area. A pulsing area of 50%
that at most 50% of all of the subfaults are active dur-
ing the rupture of a given subfault and thus contributing
to the dynamic corner frequency. The remaining sub-
faults are passive. The passive cells will not effect the
dynamic corner frequency. The active area will move
along the fault as rupture progresses.
96
While the stochastic finite-fault models are used
widely for near-source and far-field time series sim-
ulation, they do not account for exceptional observa-
tions where impulsive directivity-related long-period
behavior was observed such as the near-source station
BAM. It should be noted that this behavior is not ob-
served in all near-fault records for similar situations.
The physics behind this impulsive behavior is not yet
clear. Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou (2003) have intro-
duced a mathematical model that can be used to include
this impulsive behavior in stochastic and other model-
ing techniques. Their approach is rooted in an empirical
description of the characteristics of near-fault strong
ground motions which is explained below.
Analytical modeling of impulsive behavior
This section provides a summary and the applica-
tion to this study of analytical modeling proposed by
Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou (2003) to induce a pulse
in a simulated acceleration time series. There is no in-
tention to reintroduce the analytical modeling in this
article (see Mavroedis and Papageorgiou (2003), for
more details). For brevity, we discuss the main param-
eters that were calibrated by trial and error for the Bam
earthquake.
Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou (2003) showed that
the key parameters that define the waveform char-
acteristics of near-fault velocity pulses are the pulse
duration (or period), the pulse amplitude, and the
number and phase of half cycles. They defined an
analytical model that describes the near-fault veloc-
ity pulse in terms of these four parameters, as deter-
mined from the empirical data. The pulse duration is
defined as the inverse of the prevailing frequency of
the signal: T p = 1/f p . The analytical expression for the
ground motion acceleration time histories of the im-
pulse, a(t), is given by Mavroedis and Papageorgiou
(2003):
⎧    ⎫
⎪ Amp π f p 2π f p  
⎪
⎪− sin (t − t ) cos tπ f p (t − t0 ) + ν
⎨ γ γ
0
 
a(t) =   2π f p
⎪
⎪ +γ sin 2π f p (t − t0 ) + ν 1 + cos
⎪
⎩ γ
0,
where Amp , f p , ν, γ , and t0 describe the pulse amplitude,
prevailing frequency, phase angle, oscillatory charac-
ter, and time shift to specify the epoch of the envelope’s
peak, respectively (see Mavroedis and Papageorgiou,
2003 for more details).The parameter Amp is deter-
mined, by trial and error, so that the amplitude of the
synthetic waveform and its spectral peak agrees well
with the corresponding quantities of the observed time
series. The parameter f p = 1/T p , where T p is pulse
duration (log T p = −2.2 + 0.4 M, Mavroedis and
Papageorgiou, 2003). ν and γ are adjusted so as to op-
timize the fitting of the synthetic records (the details of
these parameters have been explained by Mavroeidis
and Papageorgiou, 2003). The near-source pulse is
manually shifted in time such that the peak of its en-
velope coincides with the time that the rupture front
passes in front of the observation point.
An important advantage of the Mavroeidis and
Papageorgiou (2003) model is that it has a sound em-
pirical basis. The methodology to include the analytical
model in stochastic finite fault modeling consists of a
number of steps (Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou, 2003),
as shown in Figure 4:
1. Apply stochastic finite fault modeling to gener-
ate stochastic acceleration time series for specific
source parameters, path effects and site amplifi-
cation. Figure 4a shows an arbitrary acceleration
time series (i.e. acceleration time series for sta-
tion BAM based on input parameters listed in
Table 2).
2. Transform stochastic acceleration time series to the
frequency domain. Figure 4b and 4c show its Fourier
amplitude and phase spectrum, respectively.
3. Use equation (6) to generate a near-source pulse
for the acceleration time series for the same mo-
ment magnitude, and selected values of the model
parameters. Figure 4d shows an example of an an-
alytical impulse, based on a arbitrary set of input
parameters (the amplitude of impulse is a percent-
age, 25%, of the PGA of the acceleration time series
in step 1; the oscillatory character, γ = 2; the pre-
vailing frequency, f p = 0.4; the pulse amplitude,
ν = 10).
⎪
⎪
⎪
 ⎬
γ γ (6)
(t − t0 ) , t0 − ≤ t ≤ t0 + with γ > 1⎪
⎪
2 f p 2 fp ⎪ ⎭
otherwise
4. Transform analytical impulse to the frequency do-
main and calculate the amplitude of Fourier spec-
trum, as shown in Figure 4e.
 97

Figure 4. (a) Acceleration time series resulting from stochastic modeling(step 1); (b) its Fourier phase spectrum (step 2); (c) its Fourier amplitude
spectrum (step 2); (d) the analytical impulse that must be included in the acceleration time series resulting from stochastic modeling; (e) Fourier
amplitude spectrum of analytical pulse; (f) absolute values of the subtraction of Fourier amplitude spectrum of the time series generated in
analytical modeling (step 4) from the Fourier amplitude spectrum generated in stochastic modeling (step 1); (g) Acceleration time series using
the spectral amplitude from 4f (step 5) and the phase spectrum of the stochastic finite fault modeling (step 4); and (h) Add time series generated
in 4g (step 6) to 4d (step 3).

5. Subtract the Fourier amplitude spectrum of the time
series generated in analytical modeling (step 4)
from the Fourier amplitude spectrum generated in
stochastic (step 2), and calculate its absolute values,
as shown in Figure 4f.
6. Return to the time domain, using the spectral am-
plitude from step 5 and the phase spectrum of the
stochastic finite fault modeling (step 2), as shown
in Figure 4g.
7. Add the time series generated in step 6 and step 3,
as shown in Figure 4h.
Comparison of Figure 4a with 4h shows the ef-
fect of the inclusion of the above mentioned impulse
(Figure 4d) in the simulated time series in step 1
(Figure 4a). This approach has been programmed as
an option in the FORTRAN program EXSIM. The
algorithm of EXSIM is a stochastic finite-fault simula-
tion algorithm (Motazedian and Atkinson, 2005) based
on the dynamic corner frequency approach as outlined
in equations (1) through (4). EXSIM is a modified ver-
sion of the FINSIM program developed by Beresnev
and Atkinson (1998a). The inclusion of the analyti-
cal near-fault model of Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou
(2003) in EXSIM enhances its ability to model impul-
sive near-fault ground motions that may dominate the
signal at long periods in some special cases. For spe-
cific near-fault records, the combination of the analyt-
ical and stochastic approach works well in producing
98

Table 2. Model Parameters for the BAM earthquake. 0.533M after Atkinson and Boore, 1995), and d is
the coefficient controlling the increase of duration
Geometric spreading 1/R (R ≤ 55 km)
with distance (Atkinson and Boore, 1995).
1/R0.5 (55 km ≤ R)
• Generic crustal and site amplification.
Anelastic attenuation; Q (f) 325f0.8
• Crustal shear wave velocity and Crustal density
Kappa 0.06
• Slip distribution
Distance dependent duration T0 + 0.1R (km)
• Fault dimension, dip angle, and depth
Site amplification “Generic soil”
(Boore and Joyner, 1997) • Location of observation points
Shear Wave Velocity 3.7 km/s • Location of Hypocenter
Density 2.8 g/cm3 • Stress drop and Pulsing area percentage
Slip distribution Random For the analytical part of the hybrid approach in
Fault Length 25 km (Based on Wells EXSIM, there are four main input parameters which in-
and Coppersmith, 1994) duce an impulse in the simulated waveform and thereby
Fault width 12 km (Based on Wells and enrich the amplitudes of lower frequencies in the wave-
Coppersmith, 1994) forms. These parameters are
Fault dip 90◦ • Analytical pulse amplitude, Amp . Mavromedias and
Fault depth 0 km Papageorgiou (2003) use an absolute values for Amp ,
Stress drop (bars) 130 bars but in this study we determined the ratio of Amp to
Pulsing area percentage 25% PGA (peak ground acceleration) based on the simu-
Ratio of Amp to PGA 0.09 lated acceleration time series obtained by stochastic
Prevailing frequency (f p = 1/T p ) log T p = −2.2 + 0.4M = 0.4 finite fault modeling.
Phase angle (ν) 10 degrees • Prevailing frequency, f p ,where f p = 1/T p . T p is the
Oscillatory character (γ ) 1.5 pulse duration and is calculated by log T p = −2.2
+ 0.4 M (Mavromedias and Papageorgiou, 2003)
• Phase angle (ν); The phase angle is adjusted so as
to optimize the fitting of the synthetic records (see
realistic broadband time histories that match both low-
Mavroeidis and Papageorgiou, 2003)
and high-frequency motions.
• Oscillatory character (γ )
Of these input parameters, the fault location
(Talebian et al., 2004), and location of the observa-
Input parameters tion points are known (Building and Housing Research
Center, 2004). Site amplification factors, are chosen
The stochastic part of EXSIM requires region-specific based on generic information. Geological maps and
attenuation and generic site parameters as follows: observations show that the alluvium deposits in Bam
• Attenuation of Fourier amplitudes with distance (ge- are about 30 m deep (Hosseini et al., 2004). There is
ometric spreading) which is the geometric attenua- no specific information regarding the site amplifica-
tion versus distance, R (will be discussed later). tion at BAM and the other BHRC stations. However,
• Anelastic attenuation of Fourier amplitudes with BHRC is currently conducting site amplification mea-
distance (Q-value). surements for its strong motion network and the results
• Rapid spectral decay at high frequencies, modeled of this study can be readjusted when this site infor-
by the kappa factor. This factor will be calculated mation becomes available, should this assumption be
in the following section for the Bam region (κ0 = shown to be unreasonable. In the interim we assumed a
0.06). This factor ranges from about 0.02 to 0.04 for “generic soil amplification” (Boore and Joyner, 1997)
California (e.g. Anderson and Hough, 1984; Boore for all BHRC stations in the area. This “generic soil
et al., 1992; Atkinson and Silva, 1997; Boore and amplification” was derived for California and it gives
Joyner, 1997). a useful estimate of average soil sites for which no soil
• Duration of ground motion, T, as a function of source amplification data are available.
duration and distance. The duration of an earth- Kappa factors for each individual record were
quake signal at epicentral distance R can generally obtained from the slope of smoothed amplitude of
be represented as T (R) = T0 + d R, where T0 is the acceleration Fourier spectrum at higher frequencies,
source duration (T0 = 1/2fa and log (fa ) = 2.41– generally more than 5 Hz, of shear wave window versus

frequency (amplitude of Fourier acceleration spectrum
is in log while frequency is in linear scales). A line
is fitted by least square to the spectrum of each indi-
vidual record to obtain the slope and calculate Kappa
for horizontal components. As expected, kappa is a
distance dependent parameter, due to frequency de-
pendency of anelastic attenuation. The main parameter
needed in this article is the zero-distance Kappa factor,
κ 0 , gained from a best-fit line (κ = κr R + κ0 ) through
the distribution of Kappa factors for horizontal com-
ponents. The fitted line for horizontal components is
κ = 0.0002R + 0.06), which suggests 0.06 for the
zero-distance Kappa factor.
The key unknown parameters are stress drop, atten-
uation model, and pulse amplitude. These parameters
need to be calibrated using the observed acceleration
and velocity time series at different stations. Hybrid
stochastic modeling is used to simulate the accelera-
tion and velocity time series for each observation point
and calibrate the parameters as described in the follow-
ing sections.
Figure 5. Simulated acceleration and velocity time series (a and c) by stochastic finite fault modeling parameterized by a dynamic corner
frequency and 130 bars stress drop. Simulated acceleration and velocity time series (b and d) from hybrid stochastic modeling. Note that (b and
d) are more accurate reproductions of Figure 2, the observed spectra.
99
Parameters determined from near-source records
The BAM strong-motion station is located less that
1 km away from the fault. This near-source recording
facilitates the calibration of the input parameters, since
some parameters (e.g. anelastic attenuation and post-
critical reflection from Moho) are not present in the
near-source motion. The stress drop and pulsing area
percentage, that control the level of spectra at high and
low frequencies respectively, are therefore calibrated
by the near-source BAM records.
Iteration over different values of stress drop in the
stochastic part of EXSIM shows that 130 bars stress
drop produces a good distribution of residuals at higher
frequencies. The simulated acceleration and velocity
time series from the stochastic finite fault modeling
based on dynamic corner frequency (a part of the hy-
brid approach), are shown in Figures 5(a and b), respec-
tively. The stochastic finite fault modeling based on
dynamic corner frequency produces a reasonable time
series, but does not reproduce the impulsive behavior
100
observed at the BAM strong motion station (Figures
2b and 2d)). In order to simulate this impulsive behav-
ior we included the analytical part of hybrid stochastic
modeling, as shown in Figures 5c, and 5d). For the ana-
lytical part of the hybrid stochastic approach in EXSIM,
there are four main input parameters that induce an im-
pulse in the simulated waveform and enrich the am-
plitudes of lower frequencies. These parameters are
calibrated by trial and error over a wide range of val-
ues. Base on iteration over a wide range of values for the
input parameters of analytical approach, the best value
for Amp /PGA ratio, ν and γ , are 0.09, 10 degrees and
1.5, respectively. There is a good agreement between
the observed time series (Figures 2a–d) and simulated
time series (Figure 5(c and d)). The 5% damped spec-
tral pseudo-acceleration well agree, in general, with the
observed ones (Figures 6a and 6b), although there are
Figure 6. Simulated 5% damped spectral pseudo-acceleration (hor-
izontal components) by both stochastic and hybrid stochastic mod-
eling methods, in comparison with recoded at near-source station,
BAM.
some small discrepancies at some frequencies. Based
on equation (5), the average slip on the fault plane is
about 0.5 m.
Parameters determined from far-filed records
Assuming the calibrated source parameters of the pre-
vious section, we can now calibrate the path parameters
such as anelastic attenuation and geometric spreading
from the other records. We calculated residuals for each
observed record at each frequency and the calibration
is done based on the analysis of trend of residuals ver-
sus distance and frequency. The following parameters
were determined.
Anelastic attenuation; the distribution of residuals
versus frequency, as shown in Figure 7a, was used
to estimate the Q-values. The distribution obtained in
Figure 7a has no obvious trend versus frequency. The
average of this distribution is also shown in Figure 7b.
As shown in Figure 7b, the average residual is close to
zero at all frequencies with the standard deviation rang-
ing from 0.25 to 0.35. The close-to-zero values for the
average of residuals were obtained by a trial and error
approach for the estimation of anelastic attenuations.
The obtained anelastic attenuation is Q = 325 f 0.8 , al-
though more data are needed to empirically derive the
anelastic attenuation in a more rigorous way.
Geometric spreading; the estimation of geometric
spreading is based on the distribution of residuals ver-
sus distance (Figure 7c). The number of records is not
sufficient to derive the effect of the reflection of the
Moho empirically. Thus, we use the depth of the Moho
as a guide to estimate the distance at which we ex-
pect such effects. The average depth of the Moho in
the Bam region is about 37 km (Dehghani and Makris,
1984; Seber et al., 1996). The Moho reflection appears
at distances of 1.5 times of the depth of Moho or more,
approximately 55 km in this case. Using this as a transi-
tion distance for the geometric spreading behavior, we
tried different values for the geometric spreading factor.
The best distribution of residuals versus distance, ob-
tained in conjunction with the aforementioned anelastic
attenuation, is shown in Figure 7c. We apply the theo-
retical geometric spreading as 1/R1.2 for the distances
less than 55 km and 1/R0.5 for larger distances. This
is in reasonable agreement with observations in other
regions (e.g. Atkinson, 2004).
Stress drop; The distribution of residuals at fre-
quencies more than 1 Hz is effected by stress drop.
We set a value of 130 bars based on the near-source

Figure 7. (a) distribution of residuals versus frequency for all sta-
tions, where the residual is defined as log of observed PSA – log of
simulated PSA (where PSA is the horizontal-component 5% damped
pseudo acceleration). (b) Distribution of residuals averaged over all
stations versus frequency. Stress drop of 130 bars produces the lowest
residuals at higher frequencies. Error bars show plus and minus one
standard deviation. (c) The best distribution of residuals versus dis-
tance, obtained based on the theoretical geometric spreading; 1/R1.2
for distances less than 55 km and 1/R0.5 for larger distances.
BAM record. Figure 7b shows that a 130 bars stress
drop also provides the lowest residuals (for frequen-
cies more than 1 Hz) for the distant observation. Thus,
the model is internally consistent.
Discussion and conclusion
We applied a hybrid stochastic approach to derive the
source and path parameters for the M6.5 Bam, Iran,
101
earthquake of December 26, 2003. Although the trade-
off between simulation parameters is a classic non-
uniqueness problem, the distribution of residuals ver-
sus different parameters is used to separate the effect of
each main input parameter in the simulations. The sym-
metric distribution of residuals around zero-line with-
out any specific trend is considered to be an indicator of
good agreement between simulated and observed time
series. We followed the following guidelines to sep-
arate the effect of each input parameters, as much as
possible, using the distribution of residuals in Figures
7a–c.
• The level of higher frequencies, mainly above 5 Hz,
is controlled by three factors: stress drop, zero-
distance Kappa factor and Q-value. In other words,
there is a trade-off between these parameters since
they can change the level of spectrum at higher fre-
quencies. To overcome this hurdle we use the fixed
Kappa obtained by analysis of recorded data. The
effects of Q and stress drop are different on the high
frequencies and the whole spectrum in Figure 7b.
A change in stress drop evenly shifts up or down
the entire curve of the average of residuals distri-
bution. A change in Q-value introduces a trend in
the distribution of residuals versus frequency and
does not shift the entire curve. Since the Kappa is
fixed and the effects of Q-Value and stress drop on
the distribution of residuals in Figure 7b are differ-
ent, thus, by trial and error covering a wide range of
reasonable values for these two parameters, we can
minimize the trade-off between these parameters in
the calibration procedures.
• The stress drop is based on the near-source record-
ing, which is free of the effects of Q-value and
geometric spreading (i.e. anelastic attenuation and
postcritical reflection from the Moho do not effect
the near-source motion.).
• The input parameters for the analytical part of mod-
eling can affect only the lower frequencies, mainly
less than 1 Hz, thus, we are able to include the nec-
essary impulse into the near-source recordings, after
the calibration of the stress drop.
• After the calibration of source parameters, the far-
field records are used to estimate the anelastic atten-
uation (Q-Value), since we followed the theoretical
values for the geometric spreading. The distribution
of residuals versus distance in Figure 7c confirms
that following the theoretical values for the geomet-
ric spreading is reasonable.
• The pulsing percentage of the active area affects
only on the level of lower frequencies, mainly less
102
than 1 Hz, thus its effects is different from those
of Q-values on average of residuals distribution in
Figure 7b. The amplitude of lower frequencies de-
creases as we increase the percentage of pulsing
area. This factor is used to change the average level
of residuals versus frequency for lower frequencies.
If the average level of residuals for lower frequen-
cies is positive we increase the pulsing percentage to
adjust them to zero line. If the average level of resid-
uals for lower frequencies is negative we decrease
the pulsing percentage to adjust them to zero line.
(This concept is described in detail in Motazedian
and Atkinson, 2005).
• Furthermore, the pulsing percentage factor is ini-
tially calibrated based on the near-source recordings,
which is free from the effects of Q-value.
Table 2 shows the calibrated parameters, includ-
ing both event-specific and generic parameters. The
key source parameters are the stress drop and puls-
ing percentage of the source, which are about 130 bars
and 25%, respectively. The average slip on the fault
plane is about 0.5 m. The comparison of waveforms
show that there is good agreement between the ob-
served and the simulated time series based on the hybrid
stochastic modeling, both in time and frequency do-
mains. The comparison is confirmed by the calculation
of residuals and their distribution versus distance and
frequency.
One of the main hurdles in this calibration was
the lack of information on the site amplification of
BHRC strong motion stations. Geological maps and
observations show that the alluvium deposits in Bam
are about 30 m deep. Thus, we applied a California-
based “generic soil amplification” for BHRC stations
in that area. BHRC is currently conducting site am-
plification measurements for its strong motion net-
work and the results of this study can be read-
justed when more specific site information becomes
available, should it prove necessary. Attenuation pa-
rameters may also be improved as more data are
analyzed.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Building and Housing Research Cen-
tre of Iran for providing the accelerographic database.
We are very grateful to Gail M. Atkinson, Eleanor
Sonley, Hamid Reza Haddadi, Yousef Bozorgnia, and
two anonymous reviewers for stimulating discussion,
their comments and helpful reviews. We also thank
Ebrahim Maleki and Hadi Khademi for providing use-
ful information on Bam earthquake.
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