Gridded earthquake ground motions for the 2023 AASHTO Design Specifications

For designing bridges to safely resist earthquakes, the 2023 editions of the AASHTO (1) Guide Specifications for LRFD Seismic Bridge Design, (2) LRFD Bridge Design Specifications, and (3) Guide Specifications for Seismic Isolation Design provide risk-targeted design ground motions via this data release and the corresponding USGS Seismic Design Web Services. The web services spatially interpolate the gridded ground motions of this data release for user-specified latitudes and longitudes. The attached files below for 8 site classes each provide risk-targeted spectral accelerations (in units of g) for a grid of latitudes and longitudes and 22 spectral periods, including 0.0 seconds for peak ground acceleration (denoted SA0P0). The spectral accelerations for Site Class BC and spectral periods of 0.0, 0.2, and 1.0 seconds were directly derived from the USGS seismic hazard curves released in the "Associated Item"; from these three values, the spectral accelerations for the other site classes and spectral periods were derived indirectly via the FEMA P-2078 "Procedures for Developing Multi-Period Response Spectra at Non-Conterminous United States Sites," because corresponding USGS hazard curves were not yet available for Alaska.

Data and Resources

Field Value
accessLevel public
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datagov_dedupe_retained 20220722134805
identifier USGS:60945d37d34e791692e6ff22
metadata_type geospatial
modified 20220617
old-spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": [[[-200.0, 48.0], [-200.0, 72.0], [ -125.0, 72.0], [ -125.0, 48.0], [-200.0, 48.0]]]}
publisher U.S. Geological Survey
publisher_hierarchy Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash ce80ddb4516ca60cb11e75a96ca155b8bfee04e8
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theme {geospatial}
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • ckan
  • earthquakes
  • engineering-sciences
  • geo
  • geoss
  • hazards
  • national
  • north-america
  • seismology
  • standards
  • united-states
  • usgs-60945d37d34e791692e6ff22
isopen False
license_id notspecified
license_title License not specified
maintainer Nicolas Luco
maintainer_email nluco@usgs.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-20T22:54:30.826220
metadata_modified 2025-11-20T22:54:30.826224
notes For designing bridges to safely resist earthquakes, the 2023 editions of the AASHTO (1) Guide Specifications for LRFD Seismic Bridge Design, (2) LRFD Bridge Design Specifications, and (3) Guide Specifications for Seismic Isolation Design provide risk-targeted design ground motions via this data release and the corresponding USGS Seismic Design Web Services. The web services spatially interpolate the gridded ground motions of this data release for user-specified latitudes and longitudes. The attached files below for 8 site classes each provide risk-targeted spectral accelerations (in units of g) for a grid of latitudes and longitudes and 22 spectral periods, including 0.0 seconds for peak ground acceleration (denoted SA0P0). The spectral accelerations for Site Class BC and spectral periods of 0.0, 0.2, and 1.0 seconds were directly derived from the USGS seismic hazard curves released in the "Associated Item"; from these three values, the spectral accelerations for the other site classes and spectral periods were derived indirectly via the FEMA P-2078 "Procedures for Developing Multi-Period Response Spectra at Non-Conterminous United States Sites," because corresponding USGS hazard curves were not yet available for Alaska.
num_resources 2
num_tags 14
title Gridded earthquake ground motions for the 2023 AASHTO Design Specifications