Partitioning ground motion uncertainty when conditioned on station data

Rapid estimation of earthquake ground shaking and proper accounting of associated uncertainties in such estimates when conditioned on strong‐motion station data or macroseismic intensity observations are crucial for downstream applications such as ground failure and loss estimation. The U.S. Geological Survey ShakeMap system is called upon to fulfill this objective in light of increased near‐real‐time access to strong‐motion records from around the world. Although the station data provide a direct constraint on shaking estimates at specific locations, these data also heavily influence the uncertainty quantification at other locations. This investigation demonstrates methods to partition the within‐ (phi) and between‐event (tau) uncertainty estimates under the observational constraints, especially when between‐event uncertainties are heteroscedastic. The procedure allows the end users of ShakeMap to create separate between‐ and within‐event realizations of ground‐motion fields for downstream loss modeling applications in a manner that preserves the structure of the underlying random spatial processes.