Seismic Response of the Basin of Quito From Continuous Accelerometric Records of Renac-Quito

Abstract eng:
The city of Quito has been damaged several times in the past by important earthquakes. The seismic hazard assessment is thus an important issue and especially, the site effect question. The Quito basin deep structure remains unknown and the potential impact of seismic waves has yet to be evaluated. The Red Nacional de Acelerógrafos (RENAC) that began in 2009 now offers a sufficient numbers of high quality data to improve the knowledge of the potential site effects. In this study, the horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio method (HVSR) is employed from noise and earthquake records to estimate the resonant frequency peaks. In addition, the ambient noise recorded by the accelerometers is analyzed by seismic interferometry techniques. This study shows that the southern part of Quito has a behavior different than that of the northern part. The southern part amplifies especially around 0.3 Hz and also around 4 Hz. It’s for example possible to observe longer duration and larger amplitude signals for this zone in the case of regional events. The observations suggest a possibly more pronounced site effect in the South due to thickening of the Quito basin in that direction.

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