Spatial correlation of shear-wave velocity within San Francisco Bay Sediments

Sediment properties are spatially variable at all scales, and this variability at smaller scales influences high frequency ground motions. We show that surface shear-wave velocity is highly correlated within San Francisco Bay Area sediments using shear-wave velocity measurements from 210 seismic cone penetration tests. We use this correlation to estimate the surface sediment velocity structure using geostatistics. We find that the variance of the estimated shear-wave velocity is reduced using ordinary kriging, and that including this velocity structure in 2D ground motion simulations of a moderate sized earthquake improves the accuracy of the synthetics. Copyright ASCE 2006.