Selection of ground motion prediction models for seismic hazard analysis in the Zagros region, Iran

The main objective of this article is to assess a set of candidate ground motion models in the Zagros region of Iran. The candidate models were chosen from three categories: local models that were developed based on the local data, regional models corresponding to Europe and Middle East data sets, and finally NGA (Next Generation Attenuation) models. Two different statistical approaches were applied for evaluation of these models, the first being the likelihood method, and the second the average log-likelihood method (LH and LLH). One of the most significant results of this study is that local ground motion models show more consistency with the recorded data than do NGA models.