Prior to the development of Australian-specific magnitude formulae, the 1935 magnitude corrections by Charles Richter – originally developed for southern California – was almost exclusively used to calculate earthquake magnitudes throughout Australia prior to the 1990s. Due to the difference in ground-motion attenuation between southern California and much of Australia, many historical earthquake magnitudes are likely to be overestimated in the Australian earthquake catalogue. A method has been developed that corrects local magnitudes using the difference between the original (inappropriate) magnitude corrections and the Australian-specific corrections at a distance determined by the nearest recording station likely to have recorded the earthquake. These corrections have reduced the rates of local magnitudes of 4.5 in the historical catalogue by about 30% since 1900, while the number of magnitude 5.0 earthquakes has reduced by about 60% in the same time period. The reduction in the number of moderate-to-large-magnitude earthquakes over the instrumental period yields long-term earthquake rates that are more consistent with present-day rates, since the development of Australian-specific magnitude formulae. The adjustment of historical earthquake magnitudes is important for seismic hazard assessments, which assume a Poisson distribution of earthquakes in space and time.

Geoscience Australia has produced an Atlas of Australian earthquake scenarios (the Atlas) to support planning and preparedness operations for emergency management agencies. The Atlas provides earthquake scenarios represent realistic “worst-case” events that may impact population centres around Australia. Such scenarios may also support seismic risk assessments for critical infrastructure assets to inform remediation actions that could be taken to improve resilience to rare seismic events in Australia. The Atlas of seismic scenarios uses the underlying science and data of the 2018 National Seismic Hazard Assessment (NSHA18) to identify the magnitudes and epicentre locations of these hypothetical earthquakes. Locations and magnitudes of earthquake scenarios are based upon deaggregation of the NSHA18 hazard model. The USGS ShakeMap software is used to produce ground motion intensity fields with the shaking levels being modified by seismic site conditions mapped at a national scale. Fault sources are incorporated into the Atlas where the magnitude of a given scenario exceeds a threshold magnitude of 6.0 and where the rupture length is likely to be longer than 10 km. If a scenario earthquake is located near a known fault within the Australian Neotectonic Features database, a partial or full-length rupture is modelled along the mapped fault. The Atlas generated two scenarios for each of the160 localities across Australia. The scenarios are based on some of the most likely earthquake magnitude-distance combinations estimated at each site. Output products include shaking contours for a range of intensity measures, including peak acceleration and velocity, as well as response spectral acceleration for 0.3, 1.0 and 3.0 seconds. Also included are raster images and the associated metadata used for generating the scenarios.

We present a methodology for developing fragilities for mainshock-damaged structures, "aftershock fragility", by performing incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) with a sequence of mainshock-aftershock ground motions. The aftershock fragility herein is distinguished from a conventional fragility for an intact structure. We estimate seismic response of a mainshock-damaged building by performing nonlinear time history analysis with a sequence of mainshock and aftershock ground motions (so-called "back-to-back" dynamic analysis). We perform the back-to-back dynamic analyses for a number of levels of mainshock response/damage, and a number of sequences of mainshock and aftershock ground motions. With estimated seismic responses from the back-to-back dynamic analyses, we compute various damage state transition probabilities, the probability of exceeding a higher damage state from an aftershock given a damage state due to a mainshock. For an illustration of the methodology, we develop an aftershock fragility for a typical New Zealand 5-storey reinforced concrete moment frame building. The building is modeled using a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) damped nonlinear oscillator with force-deformation behavior represented by a multi-linear capacity/pushover curve with moderate pinching hysteresis and medium cyclic deterioration.

The geological structure of southwest Australia comprises a rich, complex record of Precambrian cratonization and Phanerozoic continental breakup. Despite the stable continental cratonic geologic history, over the past five decades the southwest of Western Australia has been the most seismically active region in continental Australia though the reason for this activity is not yet well understood. The Southwest Australia Seismic Network (SWAN) is a temporary broadband network of 27 stations that was designed to both record local earthquakes for seismic hazard applications and provide the opportunity to dramatically improve the rendering of 3-D seismic structure in the crust and mantle lithosphere. Such seismic data are essential for better characterization of the location, depth and attenuation of the regional earthquakes, and hence understanding of earthquake hazard. During the deployment of these 27 broadband instruments, a significant earthquake swarm occurred that included three earthquakes with local magnitude (MLa) ≥ 4.0, and the network was supplemented by an additional six short-term nodal seismometers at 10 separate sites in early 2022, as a rapid deployment to monitor this swarm activity. The SWAN experiment has been continuously recording since late 2020 and will continue into 2023. These data are archived at the FDSN recognized Australian Passive Seismic (AusPass) Data center under network code 2P and will be publicly available in 2025. <b>Citation:</b> Meghan S. Miller, Robert Pickle, Ruth Murdie, Huaiyu Yuan, Trevor I. Allen, Klaus Gessner, Brain L. N. Kennett, Justin Whitney; Southwest Australia Seismic Network (SWAN): Recording Earthquakes in Australia’s Most Active Seismic Zone. <i>Seismological Research Letters </i><b>2023</b>;; 94 (2A): 999–1011. doi: https://doi.org/10.1785/0220220323

One-dimensional shear-wave velocity (VS ) profiles are presented at 50 strong motion sites in New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. The VS profiles are estimated with the spectral analysis of surface waves (SASW) method. The SASW method is a noninvasive method that indirectly estimates the VS at depth from variations in the Rayleigh wave phase velocity at the surface.

Modern geodetic and seismic monitoring tools are enabling the study of moderate-sized earthquake sequences in unprecedented detail. Discrepancies are apparent between the surface deformation envelopes ‘detectable’ using these tools, and ‘visible’ to traditional ground-based methods of observation. As an example, we compare the detectible and visible surface deformation caused by a sequence of earthquakes near Lake Muir in southwest Western Australia in 2018. A shallow MW 5.3 earthquake on the 16th of September 2018 was followed on the 8th of November 2018 by a MW 5.2 event in the same region. Focal mechanisms for the events suggest reverse and strike-slip rupture, respectively. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) analysis of the events suggests that the ruptures are in part spatially coincident and deformed the Earth’s surface over ~ 12 km in an east-west direction and ~ 8 km in a north-south direction. Field mapping, guided by the InSAR results, reveals that the first event produced an approximately 3 km long and up to 0.5 m high west-facing surface rupture, consistent with slip on a moderately east-dipping fault. No surface deformation unique to the second event was identifiable on the ground. New rupture length versus magnitude scaling relationships developed for non-extended cratonic regions as part of this study allow for the distinction between ‘visible’ surface rupture lengths (VSRL) from field-mapping and ‘detectable’ surface rupture lengths (DSRL) from remote sensing techniques such as InSAR, and suggest longer ruptures for a given magnitude than implied by commonly used scaling relationships.

This document reports on a Bushfire and Natural Hazards Collaborative Research Centre (BNHCRC) utilisation project that has sought to develop information on the most effective means to address York’s high risk buildings. It has also sought to develop a better understanding of the logistics that would be faced by the state emergency services and the local shire council in a rare but credible earthquake. The utilisation project is entitled “Earthquake Mitigation of WA Regional Towns: York Case Study”, and sits under the over-arching BNHCRC Project A9 “Cost-effective Mitigation Strategy Development for Building Related Earthquake Risk”. The work commenced in January 2018 and was undertaken over a two year period. It involved the University of Adelaide and Geoscience Australia as the CRC research partners, and DFES and the Shire of York as the end users. The WA DPLH has also been a participant, though not a formal BNHCRC end user. The project had the following key components:- • Develop a building, business and demographic exposure database for York with the attributes collected tailored for modelling earthquake impact and for quantifying avoided consequences in economic terms. • Examine the benefits and costs of retrofitting old URM buildings to improve the resilience of them to earthquake. This is to range in scale from individual households and businesses up to the community as a whole. • Prepare earthquake impact scenarios suitable for emergency management planning by DFES and the Shire of York.

Public concerns have been raised about the potential for induced seismicity as state and territory governments lift moratoriums on hydraulic stimulation activities for the exploration and extraction of unconventional hydrocarbons. The Scientific Inquiry into Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory articulated the need for a traffic-light system “to minimise the risk of occurrence of seismic events during hydraulic fracturing operations” within the Beetaloo Sub-basin. A temporary seismic network (Phase 1) was deployed in late 2019 to monitor baseline seismic activity in the basin. Based on the data analysed herein (November 2019 – April 2021), no seismic events were identified within the area of interest suggesting that the Beetaloo Sub-basin is largely aseismic. Observations to date indicate that there is potential to identify events smaller than ML=1.5 within the basin. The recent installation of ten semi-permanent stations for continuous real-time monitoring will contribute to ongoing baseline monitoring efforts and support the implementation of an induced seismicity traffic-light system. The outcome of this study will be used to build knowledge about potential human-induced seismic activity in the region that may be associated with unconventional hydrocarbon recovery. This paper was presented at the Australian Earthquake Engineering Society 2021 Virtual Conference, Nov 25 – 26.

The Government of Indonesia has committed to deploying a network of 500 strong-motion sensors throughout the nation. The data from these sensors have the potential to provide critical near-real-time information on the level of ground shaking and potential impact from Indonesian earthquakes near communities. We describe the implementation of real-time ‘ShakeMaps’ within Indonesia's Agency of Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics (BMKG). These ShakeMaps are intended to underpin real-time earthquake situational awareness tools. The use of the new strong-motion network is demonstrated for two recent earthquakes in northern Sumatra: the 2 July 2013 Mw 6.1 Bener Meriah, Sumatra and the 10 October 2013 Mw 5.4 Aceh Besar earthquakes. The former earthquake resulted in 35 fatalities, with a further 2400 reported injuries. The recently integrated ShakeMap system automatically generated shaking estimates calibrated by BMKG's strong-motion network within 7 min of the Bener Meriah earthquake's origin, which assisted the emergency response efforts. Recorded ground motions are generally consistent with theoretical models. However, more analysis is required to fully characterize the attenuation of strong ground motion in Indonesia.

At its nearest, northern Australia is just over 400 km from an active convergent plate margin. This complex and unique tectonic region combines active subduction and the collision of the Sunda-Banda Arc with the Precambrian North Australian Craton (NAC) near the Timor Trough and continues through to the New Guinea Highlands. Ground-motions generated from earthquakes on these structures have particular significance for northern Australian communities and infrastructure projects, with several large earthquakes in the Banda Arc region having caused ground-shaking-related damage in the northern Australian city of Darwin over the historical period. There are very few, if any, present-day tectonic analogs where cold cratonic crust abuts a convergent tectonic margin with subduction and continent-continent collision. Ground motions recorded from earthquakes in typical subduction environments are highly attenuated as they travel through young sediments associated with forearc accretionary prisms and volcanic back-arc regions. In contrast, seismic energy from earthquakes in the northern Australian plate margin region are efficiently channelled through the low-attenuation NAC, which acts as a waveguide for high-frequency earthquake shaking. As such, it is difficult to select models appropriate to the region for seismic hazard assessments. The development of a far-field ground-motion model to support future seismic hazard assessments for northern Australia is discussed. In general, the new model predicts larger ground motions in Australia from plate margin sources than models used for the 2018 National Seismic Hazard Assessment of Australia, none of which were considered fully appropriate for the tectonic environment. Short-period ground motions are strongly dependent on hypocentral depth and are significantly higher than predictions from commonly-used intraslab ground-motion models at comparable distances. The depth dependence in ground motion diminishes with increasing spectra periods. <b>Cite this article as</b> Allen, T. I. (2021). A Far-Field Ground-Motion Model for the North Australian Craton from Plate-Margin Earthquakes, <i>Bull. Seismol. Soc. Am. </i><b> 112</b>, 1041–1059, doi: 10.1785/0120210191