Newmark displacement model for landslides induced by the 2013 Ms 7.0 Lushan earthquake, China

Predicting approximate earthquake-induced landslide displacements is helpful for assessing earthquake hazards and designing slopes to withstand future earthquake shaking. In this work, the basic methodology outlined by Jibson (1993) is applied to derive the Newmark displacement of landslides based on strong ground-motion recordings during the 2013 Lushan Ms 7.0 earthquake. By analyzing the relationships between Arias intensity, Newmark displacement, and critical acceleration of the Lushan earthquake, formulas of the Jibson93 and its modified models are shown to be applicable to the Lushan earthquake dataset. Different empirical equations with new fitting coefficients for estimating Newmark displacement are then developed for comparative analysis. The results indicate that a modified model has a better goodness of fit and a smaller estimation error for the Jibson93 formula. It indicates that the modified model may be more reasonable for the dataset of the Lushan earthquake. The analysis of results also suggests that a global equation is not ideally suited to directly estimate the Newmark displacements of landslides induced by one specific earthquake. Rather it is empirically better to perform a new multivariate regression analysis to derive new coefficients for the global equation using the dataset of the specific earthquake. The results presented in this paper can be applied to a future co-seismic landslide hazard assessment to inform reconstruction efforts in the area affected by the 2013 Lushan Ms 7.0 earthquake, and for future disaster prevention and mitigation.