An application of cokriging for estimation of tripartite earthquake response spectra

A tripartite earthquake response spectrum exhibits peak values of acceleration, velocity, and displacement in concert, each as a function of natural frequency of vibration. Because cokriging is a regionalized variable technique for multiple variable estimation, it was employed to jointly estimate peak values of acceleration, velocity, and displacement through a frequency discretization process. The objective of this application was to develop a technique for estimation of response spectra at uninstrumented locations. Because magnitudes of the three response variables differed, these data were normalized prior to cokriging. This process simply involved dividing each type of variable by its maximum value for a given frequency; hence, values of each type of variable ranged between zero and one. This allowed better accuracy in developing cross-variograms. Cokriging proved to be an efficient and accurate technique to use for the estimation of tripartite response spectra.