Modern Methods of Estimating Local Effects of Earthquakes.

Local effects pertain to the main factors determining the ground motion parameters during earthquakes. The local effects associated with seismic ground response have always been paid much attention in the practice of engineering seismology since most urban regions in the world are situated in river valleys, on the soft young sedimentary deposits. The river valleys in the earthquake-prone areas host a number of large cities of the world such as Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Salvador, Caracas, Lima, Bogota, Kathmandu, Manila, Thessaloniki, Mexico City, etc. The abundance and significance of these effects stimulated numerous instrumental, theoretical, and numerical studies aimed at better understanding and quantifying these effects. To date, the methods have been developed in seismology for reliable assessment of these effects. In this paper, the methods of assessing the local effects of the earthquakes that were used at the early stages of seismology and their evolution up to the modern level are described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]