The 2003 Mw 6.8 Boumerdes earthquake caused serious damage to the Boumerdes prefecture and the eastern part of Algiers which is the capital of Algeria and claimed about 2300 lives. The strong motions were recorded at several seismic stations by the national accelerometer network operated by the national research center of earthquake engineering (CGS). The nearest station was 30 km away from the hypocenter. However, the ground motion was not recorded in the near field where the damage was most destructive.
In this study, we performed the empirical Green’s function method (EGFM) to simulate the strong ground motion of this event by using two aftershocks recorded at several stations. The best source model was obtained by fitting the synthetic accelerations, velocities, and displacement to the observed waveforms. Seismic wave propagation and site amplification effects on the strong ground motion are explicitly taken into account considering the aftershocks recorded at same stations as empirical Green’s functions. The source model provides an important key to understand the damage distribution caused by the earthquake as well as strong ground motions in the near field area. An application of the stochastic Green’s function method for simulation is also applied in this study, and the results are compared with the observed waveforms at station ST1. This alternative method is also important for seismic hazard assessment to simulate strong ground motion in the case of that strong motion records for small earthquakes are not available.