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Computers & Geosciences 36 (2010) 977986

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Computers & Geosciences

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Proschema: A Matlab application for processing strong motion records and estimating earthquake engineering parameters$
M. Segou n, N. Voulgaris
Department of GeophysicsGeothermics, Faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Panepistimioupoli Zografou, 15784 Athens, Greece

a r t i c l e in fo
Article history: Received 31 March 2009 Received in revised form 3 July 2009 Accepted 14 September 2009 Keywords: Corrected time series Response spectra Seismology Smc format CDMG format European strong motion database format

abstract
Strong motion records are the original input data for earthquake engineering studies and earthquake resistant building codes. Records originating from both, analogue and modern digital instruments should be subjected to processing in order to derive credible engineering parameters, such as spectral ordinates. A number of processing procedures have been proposed by many researchers through the past few decades; the goal, however, is always the same, identication and removal of noise and performing necessary adjustments related to the operating instrument or the records quality. A careful inspection of previous processing schemes and the design of several development tests related to major processing steps proved to be helpful in determining the necessary features that the presented software should include. These have been incorporated in a Matlab application in order to produce a reliable and user-friendly interface giving the researcher several options on major processing steps. It is noteworthy that this computer program can be used either as an interactive process tool when individual record processing corresponds to the researchers needs or, for processing a vast number of records without user supervision and even through a scheduled task. & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Software packages capable to address the need for strong motion record processing belong to two main categories; they are either a product of a seismological instrument provider company, which in several cases do not incorporate the latest advances in digital signal processing, or a non-commercial research product. Proschema belongs clearly to the second category since the objective behind its development has been to provide the user, a seismologist or an engineer, with the necessary ground motion parameters, through a prism of innovation regarding processing and computational techniques. In case the derived spectral parameters are to be used in earthquake engineering research the processing scheme is of fundamental importance since the effort is twofold; to remove the noise in periods of interest and to protect the actual frequency content of the record from the application of unnecessary severe lters. During the processing of any strong motion record several actions are better carried out either in the time or frequency domain; this criterion has been fundamental during Proschema development.
$ n

Briey, Proschema supports lter implementation in order to remove high and low frequency noise by applying carefully designed lters and inspection of the corrected acceleration, velocity and displacement time series, calculation of elastic response spectra in terms of pseudo spectral acceleration, velocity and displacement for basic damping values, and computation of other spectral ground motion measures independent of the sensor orientation (Boore et al., 2006). The user can also estimate earthquake engineering parameters such as peak ground motion parameters, effective peak acceleration and velocity, response spectrum intensity, acceleration spectrum intensity as well as cumulative absolute velocity, root-mean squared acceleration and Arias intensity. The user can be either involved in an interactive process by providing all necessary choices, developing a personal standardized procedure, or perform automatic processing based in predened choices. The structure of the paper follows the description of the items on the main menu bar of Proschema in order to familiarize the reader with the presented software.

2. Strong motion record processing with Proschema

Code available from server at http://www.iamg.org/CGEditor/index.htm Corresponding author. Tel.: + 30 210 7274206; fax: + 30 210 7274878. E-mail addresses: msegou@geol.uoa.gr (M. Segou), voulgaris@geol.uoa.gr (N. Voulgaris). 0098-3004/$ - see front matter & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2009.09.020

This manuscript provides a thorough description of the features supported by Proschema; but the user can also nd additional documentation, some theoretical aspects as well as a

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user guide in the Proschema User Manual (included with the software) together with useful suggestions about strong motion processing. 2.1. Supported data formats Proschema supports importing strong motion raw data in several formats such as Cosmos version 1.10, and 1.20 smc les (COSMOS Strong Motion Data Format, 2001), the format of the European Strong motion Database, as well as CDMG format (Shakal and Huang, 1985). Since several networks for convenience in distribution form multicomponent records derived from the concatenation of single component smc format les (COSMOS Strong motion Record Format, 2001) a supplementary option regarding the aforementioned les has been incorporated in the software. Additionally, the user can import seismometer data in SAC binary format and proceed with processing and calculation of response spectra and engineering parameters (Clinton and Heaton, 2002); but caution is advised since the user should provide instrument corrected (Havskov and Alguacil, 2004) velocity time series in this case. There are however two specic formats, referred as NOA and ITSAK, used by Greek providers of strong motion data, that even though they bear characteristics of other standard formats they are highly irregular due to the existence of many spacing errors and non-standarized format requiring the implementation of special scripts to address this inhomogeneity. A number of utilities simplifying the conversion between formats can be also found in the software package for third party usage. For reasons of minimizing computer storage requirements Proschema keeps both uncorrected and processed time series, their corresponding spectra and estimated parameters in mat Matlab binary les in the form of a standardized Matlab structure. The aforementioned .mat les can be also loaded into Proschema if the user wishes to reprocess or view the corrected or raw time series once again. Before importing raw data the user can also visually inspect strong motion records in order to decide which should be further processed. After importing a strong motion record the user may opt to review earthquake and station metadata as well as available processing features. 2.2. Time and frequency domain processing As it was briey mentioned in the introduction Proschema software supports actions carried out in the time and frequency domain. Several actions such as the construction of an equally sampled time series, performing re-sampling techniques, or instrument and baseline adjustment can be thought as time domain related processing but when it comes to mathematical integration or the implementation of a previously designed lter, frequency domain related processing is advisable. An analytical description of the features related with Time and Frequency Domain Processing serve the purpose of informing the reader about Proschema capabilities. 2.2.1. Time domain processing Time domain processing is related to the rst processing steps including the construction of an equally spaced time series, the removal of the records mean, the application of re-sampling techniques and performing necessary adjustments which are referred for many years as instrument and baseline correction. The user is encouraged to inspect the raw time series since the existence of spurious spikes appears to be a common problem that should be dealt within the pre-processing stage. The

algorithm used for identication and removal of spikes has two stages; taking into consideration the severity of the problem while at the same time protecting the original information that the raw time series provides. During the rst stage spike identication is accomplished by a running window with overlapping segments, tracking unexpected exceedances of a threshold acceleration, which is re-computed for each window. The peaks indentied earlier as spikes are replaced with an average amplitude value, between preceding and following samples. In cases where spurious spikes remain, a second stage of spike removal can be implemented. At this point the part of the signal that does not contain spurious spikes is protected from the de-spiking effort. In a number of cases uncorrected strong motion records do not correspond to equally sampled time series. In order to solve this problem equally sampled series are constructed with sampling interval equal to the minimum digitization time step of the original time series. If the minimum interval tends to be very close to zero then the sampling interval equals the average of digitization time steps. An additional interesting feature is related with the removal of the mean of the user-dened pre-event segment of digital strong motion records. The application of re-sampling techniques, such as oversampling and decimation of a time series, is provided in order to change the initial sample rate. Proschema implements resampling by employing a exible public-domain resampling algorithm, found in MATGPR software (Tzanis, 2006) described in detail in Smith and Gosset (1984). According to the theory of ideal bandlimited interpolation during sampling rate conversion the problem is to correctly compute signal values at arbitrary continuous times from a set of discrete time samples of the signal amplitude. After considerable research has been devoted to the problem of interpolating discrete points the method followed in order to reconstruct the re-sampled time series uses a cardinal sine function evaluated at specied times. According to Karl (1989) changing the sampling rate without previous oversampling can lead to signicant loss of higher frequency content of the strong motion record. The degree and method of up-sampling has been investigated through development tests by accepting minimum impact on the original strong motion record as the appropriate criterion for choosing the method of interpolation and the degree of re-sampling. The default oversampling supports an intermediate sampling rate at 600 samples-per-second by cardinal sine interpolation (Karl, 1989) whereas before downsampling, at 200SPS, a low-pass lter is implemented in preparation of decimation for ensuring that no aliasing occurs in the decimated data. The choice of arbitrary oversample and decimation allows the user to dene the desired degree of up-sampling and decimation. Instrument adjustment is performed by a second order differential equation representing the motion of a single degree of freedom, damped, harmonic oscillator which is commonpractice since the late 70s (Hudson, 1979). Since most of the available strong motion databases incorporate both digital and analogue records, instrument adjustment should be performed when needed. Although strong motion records from this kind of analogue instruments suffer articial high frequency noise due to hand digitization (Trifunac et al., 1999) in most cases, especially when the natural frequency of the accelerograph is less than 20 Hz, instrument adjustment should not be avoided. Development tests showed that in the case of an analogue instrument with natural frequency of 17 Hz the lower frequency adjusted is of the order of 10.512 Hz; pointing out the importance of performing instrument adjustment (Fig. 1). The suggested process can adjust for the instrument response to frequencies reaching up

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Fig. 1. Inuence of performing instrument adjustment. Fourier amplitude spectrum of an uncorrected acceleration time series against the spectrum of an instrument adjusted time series of a typical analogue accelerograph with natural frequency 17 Hz. Instrument adjustment begins for frequencies signicantly lower than nominal frequency of instrument.

to a quarter of the Nyquist frequency (Boore and Bommer, 2005) so the user is encouraged, in case of analogue recording, to provide a 200SPS original frequency in order to compensate, at least partially, for the analogue instruments deciency to record strong motion near its nominal natural frequency. Baseline adjustment involves a quadratic t to the velocity time series which is then applied to the acceleration time series; a simplication of the procedure formerly proposed by Graizer (1979). 2.2.2. Frequency domain processing The frequency domain processing holds the most signicant part of any processing scheme since it involves frequency ltering. Primary inspection of the Fourier amplitude spectrum of the uncorrected acceleration, velocity and displacement time series provide an evaluation tool for the frequency content of the record. Mathematical calculations such as integration, in order to obtain velocity time series, are carried out in the frequency domain to produce more stable results. Taking into consideration the invertibility of the Fourier transform, according to Parseval s theorem, the acceleration time series can be represented through its Fourier transform. Extending the above, the integration of a sinusoidal input signal in the frequency domain corresponds to the convolution with the frequency response of the perfect integration operator which is 1/io whereas for differentiation the frequency response of the operator is just the inverse of the integrator, simply io (Karl, 1989). Another tool provided to evaluate the records frequency content supports the visual inspection of the Fourier amplitude spectrum of the uncorrected acceleration time series of recordings corresponding to the same earthquake, selected by means of distance and site characteristics. This option aids the user for the investigation of the actual, on acceptance that this term exists, frequency content of the recording. It should be noted that records corresponding to near eld recordings are excluded from

this primary inspection in order to avoid high frequency content, due to near-source effects, and nonlinear de-amplication phenomena. The latter are more prominent in soft sites, characterized with shear wave velocity less than 360 m/s, at epicentral distances less than 10 km; which only supports further the authors decision to exclude near eld recordings. The selected recordings are eventually sorted by means of inter-station distance and the Fourier spectrum of the uncorrected acceleration of the homonymous components of the three closest stations are nally provided.

2.2.3. Filter design The most time consuming procedure when processing strong motion records involves lter design and implementation. Concerning the design of a frequency lter, the authors believe that the user should be free to decide which is the preferable lter type and its specications, but within limits. The limits, controlling such sensitive a procedure, had been set during the development tests of Proschema and lead to the conclusion that innite impulse response lters of Butterworth and elliptic type can adequately be used in strong motion record processing. During the rst steps of the present study the theoretical aspects of lter characteristics played an important role in selecting which lter types should be incorporated in the software. The minimum required lter order and the nature of the transition band of the lter type had been the main criteria for choosing the lter types used during development tests (Fig. 2). Elliptic lters are the most efcient in achieving performance specications with the minimum lter order (Proakis and Manolakis, 1996). For a given lter order and performance specications elliptic lters exhibit the smallest transition band, in other words they have the steepest roll off ; a factor that which can also inuence the spectral ordinates. Butterworth lter type is characterized by a magnitude response that is maximally at in the pass band and monotonic

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Fig. 2. Impact of different lter types and implementation techniques on spectral ordinates. Pseudo acceleration response spectra for 5% damping value after four different types of ltering, all supported by Proschema software. Two lter types, such as Butterworth and elliptic, are combined with two types of lter implementation, such as causal and phase preserving, in order to illustrate ltering capabilities of this code. All four ltering options have common cut-off frequencies. Usable Data Bandwidth between 0.0416 and 5.3334 s corresponds to the most strict choice for Butterworth lters; elliptic lters are sharper than other but they show ripples across whole bandwidth which suggests further caution when designing and implementing the latter.

overall (Ingle and Proakis, 1997) and as a consequence provides a smoother transition band with low lter order. Thus, although elliptic lters meet given performance specications with the lowest order of any lter type, Butterworth lter is a better choice for several applications since it has better phase response, whereas the rst one is highly non linear near the desirable data bandwidth (Proakis and Manolakis, 1996). The concept of parsimony applied in lter design suggests that Butterworth lter stands as a better choice since a smaller number of designing factors is required, providing the user with more stable and replicable results. The denition of the values of pass band ripple and stop band attenuation are two factors required when designing an elliptic lter, which can lead to different peak ground acceleration and Arias intensity values even if the order of the lter has not been changed (Mollova, 2007). Therefore, selecting Butterworth combines the smaller lter order with less steep roll off than an elliptic lter. The user is free to decide however between these two lter types when designing a frequency lter. Except lter type there is a number of lter specications, such as the lter order, ve pairs of possible low and high cut frequencies, the nature of the lters implementation, that is whether a causal or phase-preserving implementation is required and if the time series should be tapered or not, that the user should enter before the implementation of the lter. Proschema facilitates the denition of lters specications through a gure window, in which the Usable Data Bandwidth (UDB) is also stated,

next to the possible pairs of cut off frequencies. The Usable Data Bandwidth for a strong motion record lies between the high and low corner frequencies of the selected lter. According to Shakal et al. (2003) outside this band, lters have removed a great amount of information making data practically unusable in modelling structure response.

2.2.4. Filter implementation In order to create a less severe processing scheme each pair of the low and high cut off frequencies are combined in a bandpass lter. Development tests supported the idea that a bandpass implementation in contrast to a high pass followed by a low pass lter can produce differences in the time histories. It is our observation that implementing two lters can inuence frequencies more severely than a bandpass lter, which appears to be a more stable solution. To implement innite impulse ltering of an acceleration time series in the frequency domain, Proschema multiplies the Fourier transform of the input sequence with the frequency response function of the lter followed by inverse Fourier Transform (Scherbaum, 1996). Acausal implementation in the frequency domain is strongly suggested since it will prevent phase delay (Scherbaum, 1996) but causal implementation for specic applications should not be avoided (Fig. 3). Any recursive lter, such as Butterworth and

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elliptic, can be converted to zero phase with bidirectional technique of lter implementation (Smith, 1997). Bidirectional ltering in the frequency domain involves further convolution the Fourier transform of the data of the rst pass with the conjugate frequency response of the lter and subsequent inverse Fourier transform. In the case of the acausal lter implementation special caution is advised concerning the length of the input sequence so as to accommodate the lters innite impulse response. Concerning innite impulse response lters with acausal implementation, padding symmetrically the time series with a number of zero samples is of great importance (Boore, 2005; Boore and Akkar, 2003; Karl, 1989). For a given low cut off frequency the ltered time series can be severely inuenced when no zero padding has been performed before ltering or even when non adequate number of zero samples has been added. The number of zero samples is a function of the low cut off frequency and the order of the lter (Converse and Brady, 1992; Boore, 2005). Regarding tapering before padding with zero samples takes place, in case the length of the original time series is adequate exceeding 10 seconds, a cosine taper is applied symmetrically to the 20% of the time series. In any other case the zero padding is performed before and after the rst and last zero-crossing, respectively. 2.2.5. Selection of the appropriate cut-off frequencies The stability and easy implementation of spectral division techniques and frequency domain ltering allows the user to inspect the velocity and displacement time series once ltering of the acceleration time series is completed. The selection of the appropriate pair of cut off frequencies is accomplished through

the comparison of acceleration, velocity and displacement ltered time series which are simultaneously produced after the implementation of ve different band pass lters, which are designed according to the user dened lters specications at the corresponding window. For clarication reasons the authors state that, Proschema combines user dened, lter specications such as lter type, order, implementation details with eachuser denedpair of cut off frequencies; designing a unique frequency response for each of the ve lters. The next step involves ltering the uncorrected acceleration time series with each one of the ve lters and producing velocity and displacement time series after integration of the each ltered acceleration time series. Together with the uncorrected acceleration, velocity and displacement time series the user can inspect ve differently ltered acceleration, velocity and displacement time series and decide which one corresponds to an adequately ltered time series (see User Manual for details about corresponding gure windows). After selecting the most suitable ltered time series the user can review closely the latter by inspecting the corrected acceleration, velocity and displacement time series at a dedicated gure (Fig. 4).

2.3. Spectra 2.3.1. Calculation of response spectra The authors note that in case of a previous phase preserving implementation, where padding with a number of zero samples took place, the ltered time series remains padded thought out the response spectra calculation. Spectra calculation comes after reviewing the selected ltered time series which involves inspection of the uncorrected Fourier

Fig. 3. Filter implementation techniques. Acceleration time series ltered with causal and phase preserving implementation; notice phase shift. Butterworth lter type and cut-off frequencies at 0.15 Hz, are common for both implementations. Phase preserving implementation corresponds to a two-pass four-pole lter whereas causal in the other hand equals a one-pass eight-pole lter implementation.

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Fig. 4. Inspection of corrected acceleration, velocity and displacement time series with available header and metadata information.

amplitude spectrum versus the ltered spectrum of the acceleration time series to verify the adequate implementation of the designed lter. The calculation of elastic response spectra, in terms of pseudo-acceleration, velocity and displacement, for the basic damping levels over a wide range of period estimators (Fig. 5) follows the numerical method proposed by Nigam and Jennigs (1969) based on the exact solution of the differential equation describing the maximum response of a simple oscillator subjected to base-acceleration a(t) . The authors selected this particular method because there are observable differences between time and frequency domain calculations (Robinson et al., 2006) of elastic response spectra. However small the arithmetic differences are, the smooth nature of time domain-derived response spectra lead to the nal selection of the well-documented solution provided by Nigam and Jennigs (1969). Further response spectra calculation involves the computation of the measures of the geometric mean, introduced as GMRotD50 and GMRotI50 (Fig. 6), which are independent of the sensor orientation as dened in Boore et al. (2006). As stated therein both measures are based on a set of geometric means computed from the as-recorded orthogonal horizontal motions rotated through all possible non-redundant rotation angles. The reader can refer to the aforementioned paper for the detailed denition of these two innovative measures since further analysis is beyond the scope of the present paper.

2.3.2. Calculation of earthquake engineering ground motion parameters Concerning engineering parameters Proschema supports the calculation of various ground motion parameters related with the duration, the amplitude and the frequency content of the accelerogram, such as peak ground acceleration and velocity, effective peak acceleration and velocity, response spectrum intensity, acceleration spectrum intensity, root-mean squared acceleration and Arias intensity.

The effective peak acceleration (EPA) is dened as the average spectral acceleration over the period range 0.10.5 s divided by 2.5, which is the standard amplication factor for a response spectrum of 5% damping value. The effective peak velocity (EPV) is proportional to the average of pseudo-velocity spectral ordinates at period of about 1 sec divided by a factor of 2.5. According to the Applied Technology Council (1978) both parameters could be considered as response spectra normalization factors and they are further used in Proschema during calculation of normalized response acceleration spectrum. The response spectrum intensity (SI), as dened in Housner (1959) corresponds to the area under the pseudo-velocity response spectrum between 0.1 and 2.5 s for any fraction of the critical damping. Von Thun et al. (1988) introduced the acceleration spectrum intensity (ASI) dened as the area under the acceleration response spectrum for 5% value of the critical damping between the 0.1 and 0.5 s period estimators. Since it is widely used in seismic hazard studies Proschema includes calculation of cumulative absolute velocity (CAV), which is the area under the absolute accelerogram (Kramer, 1996). The remaining engineering parameters include information about the amplitude and frequency content of the strong motion record to which root mean squared acceleration and Arias intensity are closely related. The latter, dened by Arias (1970), is obtained by integration over the entire duration rather than over the duration of strong motion (Kramer, 1996). Even though modern studies proposed a variety of measures regarding the evaluation of the duration of strong motion; the authors feel that a widely used measure such as the bracketed duration will serve Proschema purposes well. The bracketed duration (Bolt, 1969) is dened as the time between the rst and last exceedances of a threshold acceleration value, usually 0.05 g (Kramer, 1996). However the authors stress out that engineering parameters such as root mean squared acceleration are sensitive to the method used to determine strong motion duration

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Fig. 5. Inspection of pseudo acceleration response spectra for basic damping values; cut off periods are indicated together with suggested usable data bandwidth, which for Butterworth phase preserving implementation is considered to be the short and long period cut off multiplied by a factor of 1/0.8 and 0.8, respectively. It is strongly advised to refrain from using spectral ordinates outside suggested usable data bandwidth, which lies between 0.0416 and 5.3334 s.

Calculating engineering parameters, such as the response spectrum intensity and acceleration spectrum intensity, by denition suggests denite integration; but the corresponding function is not only discontinuous, between the given set of period estimators, but its arithmetic values under evaluation are the solution in terms of local maxima of a set of non-linear equations providing the response of the system only at discrete values of period estimators; the above remark makes the mathematical approach towards the area computation a demanding one. The current approach supports the use of cubic splines for the solution of the integral equation of an unknown function (Fig. 7). The boundary integral method is implemented after the approximation of the unknown function by means of cubic spline interpolation along the boundary. Analytically, a vector-valued spline evaluated at planar points (x(i), y(i), i 1yn), on this occasion the (x, y) stands for pairs of (T, PSA or PSV), forms a spline curve using chord-length parametrization and cubic spline interpolation. Cubic spline interpolation is characterized by continuous rst and second derivatives which allows for an accurate denition of the function under study. The use of cubic splines provides a better approach than a high order polynomial because the rst lacks abrupt uctuations. The denition of the spline curve is followed by the construction of the indenite integral and the nal evaluation of the indenite integral at the endpoints of the basic interval of period estimators. The difference between the aforementioned integrals

equals the arithmetic value of the denite integral over the basic interval of interest between period estimators. The use of cubic splines in addressing problems of mathematical calculations is extended to different elds of earth science other than engineering seismology, as hydraulics and hydrology (Liggett and Salmon, 1981).

3. Available Proschema modes Proschema also includes several operation modes enabling the user to perform automatic processing, with predened or varying processing parameters either for a number of records or for the remaining components of a multi-component strong motion record as well as semi-automatic processing through an algorithm for the selection of the low cut-off corner frequency. The aforementioned algorithm holds twenty three possible low cut-off frequencies ranging from 0.08 to 0.3 Hz selecting the most suitable by testing the stability of the peak ground displacement value, as derived from the adjacent ltered displacement time series. That is for every pair of successive low cut-offs the difference in peak ground displacement value is evaluated. At the point where the differences in peak ground displacement values tend to reach a minimum the strong motion record is very close to be considered noise free. The calibration of the automatic algorithm in terms of the denition of a subjective threshold, for which the differences in peak ground displacement values are considered minimized, came through

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Fig. 6. Orientation independent ground motion measure GMRotI50, introduced by Boore et al. (2006), compared with standard pseudo acceleration response spectra of two horizontal components for 5% damping value.

Fig. 7. Cubic spline approximation of response spectra. Computation of earthquake engineering known as acceleration spectrum intensity (ASI) by means of vector valued splines for achieving approximation of response spectra calculated at an earlier processing stage.

comparing the user selected low cut off frequencies against the suggested from the automatic algorithm using an actual strong motion data set (Segou et al., 2008) including world wide analogue and digital strong motion records. It should be noted

that a standard deviation of 0.06 Hz on the selection of the low cut-off frequency is expected at this time; but Proschema offers the user the ability to personalize the default threshold after the latter has processed an adequate number of strong motion

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records. It comes within understanding that the recalculation of the threshold depicts the users behaviour towards strong motion processing and it is strictly user-dependant. The user can also perform processing without supervision of a vast number of strong motion records. Therefore, a standarized processing structure, that incorporates a number of default processing parameters such as the lter specications, information about the implementation of baseline or instrument adjustment and re-sampling techniques as well as the calculation of engineering parameters, is provided; the user however can easily modify them so as to formulate a processing scheme according to the research needs. In case the user wishes to process the remaining component of a multi-component recording Proschema uses exactly the same processing parameters as the ones being used during processing of the current strong motion record. Proschema also provides the functionality of a scheduled processing task for les under the specications of the European Strong motion Database (Ambraseys et al., 2002), for smc format les and records converted to mat les through utilities included in the software. This can be achieved thought a third party scheduler which initiates Proschema and performs processing with predened parameters, as described earlier in this paragraph.

and the ITSAK institute for earthquake engineering studies (Theodulidis et al., 2004) or international data providers, such as the United States Geological Survey, through the National Strong Motion Project,1 and the Center for Engineering Strong Motion Data.2 The rst author would like to thank Dr. David Boore for guidance and comments about strong motion data processing during the early stage of this research and for providing the Fortran code for calculating response spectra and orientation independent measures, the original code can be found in Boore (2008), the authors give credit in the function reference chapter of Proschema User Manual as well as at the descriptive header of transcribed in Matlab codes. Useful comments and suggestions made by Assistant Professor of the Department of GeophysicsGeothermics Dr. Tzanis during the rst steps of signal processing proved to be invaluable for the authors. This research had been funded by the Greek Scholarship Foundation (IKY). The nal version of this paper beneted signicantly from the comments and suggestions made by Dr. Boore and an anonymous reviewer.

Appendix A. Supplementary material Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in the online version at doi:10.1016/j.cageo.2009.09.020.

4. Concluding remarks Strong motion record processing is a signicant component of earthquake engineering and seismic hazard studies. Even though several agencies provide corrected acceleration time series, in a number of cases the researcher should follow a different processing scheme. The advances of digital signal processing during the last decades lead the authors to the incorporation this knowledge related to the processing of earthquake records, in a computer code that can be used in seismological and engineering practice. Performing necessary adjustments and implementing user-designed lters, instead of black box lter implementation, provides the user the ability to study the effects of processing techniques and evaluate almost any suggested processing scheme. Detailed documentation of important aspects regarding Proschema operation can be found in the Proschema User Manual. Following current seismological trends Proschema allows the user to import seismological data collected by broad band velocity sensors and derive strong motion parameters. Processing of strong motion records without user supervision can be also a useful option in order to handle large data sets.

References
Ambraseys, N., Smit, P., Sigbjornsson, R., Suhadolc, P., Margaris, B., 2002. Internet-Site for European Strong-Motion Data, European Commission, Research-Directorate General, Environment and Climate Programme. /http://www.isesd.cv.ic.ac.uk/S, (accessed 7 March 2010). Applied Technology Council, 1978. Tentative provisions for the development of seismic regulations for buildings, Applied Technology Council report ATC-3-06 (NBS SP-510). United States Government Printing Ofce, Washington 505 pp. Arias, A., 1970. A measure of earthquake intensity. In: Hansen, R.J. (Ed.), Seismic Design for Nuclear Power Plants. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 438483. Bolt, B.A., 1969. Duration of strong motion. In: Proceedings of the 4th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Santiago, Chile, pp. 13041315. Boore, D.M., 2005. On pads and lters: processing strong-motion data. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 95 (2), 745750. Boore, D.M., 2008. TSSPA collection of FORTRAN for processing and manipulating time series, version 1.5, United States Geological Survey, Open-File Report 1111, 40 pp. Boore, D.M., Akkar, S., 2003. Effect of causal and non causal lters on elastic and inelastic response spectra. Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics 32, 17291748. Boore, D.M., Bommer, J.J., 2005. Processing of strong-motion accelerograms: needs, options and consequences. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 25, 93115. Boore, D.M., Watson-Lamprey, J., Abrahamson, N.A., 2006. Orientation independent measures of ground motion. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 96, 15021511. Clinton, F.H., Heaton, T.H., 2002. Potential advantages of a strong motion velocity meter over a strong motion accelerometer. Seismological Research Letters 73 (3), 322342. Consortium of Organizations for Strong-Motion Observation Systems, 2001. COSMOS Strong motion data format, p. 16, /http://www.cosmos-eq.org/ menu/2_Publications/cosmos_format_1_20.pdfS (accessed 7 March 2010). Converse, A.M., Brady, A.G., 1992. BAP: Basic strong-motion accelerogram processing software; Version 1.0. Open File Report 92-296A, United States Department of the Interior, United States Geological Survey, Denver, CO, 180 pp. Graizer, V., 1979. Determination of the true ground displacement by using strong motion records. Physics of the Solid Earth 15, 875885. Havskov, J., Alguacil, G., 2004. Instrumentation in Earthquake Seismology. Springer, Dordrecht 358 pp. Housner, G.W., 1959. Behaviour of structures during earthquakes. Journal of the Engineering Mechanics Division 85, 109129.

Comments The user is urged to read the Proschema User Manual for further documentation, technical references and review of some theoretical aspects related to the software. An instruction guide together with useful comments about processing sample data les included in the software can be found in the last chapter of the Proschema User Manual. The reader may also communicate the corresponding author for providing Supplementary codes for importing strong motion data in other formats.

Acknowledgments Sample data included in the software have been provided either by Greek institutions providing strong motion data, such as the National Observatory of Athens (Kalogeras and Stavrakakis, 2007)

1 2

http://nsmp.wr.usgs.gov/ http://www.strongmotioncenter.org/

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