Opensignal: a software framework for earthquake record processing and selection

The use of ground motion data has been increasing worldwide due to the increasing availability of ground motion records and increased interest from the earthquake engineering community in using linear and nonlinear response history analysis in seismic analysis and design. In particular, selection and processing of earthquake records plays a key role in seismic risk assessment of buildings and structures in general. The earthquake ground motion processing signal tool OPENSIGNAL presented in this paper applies methods commonly used in earthquake engineering for the analysis of seismic data. It constitutes an efficient way to process multiple ground motion records, deriving a number of strong-motion parameters often required by structural engineers and seismologists. In fact, the user of ground motion records typically needs to use a large number of specialized and general purpose applications to perform relatively simple tasks such as displaying and comparing ground motion histories, searching for records that satisfy certain criteria or match a spectral shape, processing records to perform baseline correction or filtering, and computing ground motion properties and linear and/or nonlinear spectra. OPENSIGNAL is a computer program that joins together in software different features such as: research and selection of ground motion records, signal analysis, elastic response spectra creation, target spectrum definition, spectral and waveform matching. The main scope is to provide users with an instrument, which is able to define completely the seismic input to be used in structural engineering applications. The software is freely downloadable for the general public at the following website: http://areeweb.polito.it/ricerca/ICRED/Software/OpenSignal.php .