**Acknowledgements**

This work was supported by the Endeavour Scholarship scheme financed out of Government of Malta national fund and also formed part of the SIMIT project (Integrated Italy-Malta Cross-Border System of Civil Protection) (B1-2.19/11) partfinanced by the European Union under the ItaliaMalta Cross-Border Cooperation Programme, 2007–2013. The authors are grateful to Dr. D. Albarello and Dr. E.Lunedei for the use of the ESAC and joint inversion codes.

with the site class A spectrum, profile 3 with site class C, while profile 1 can be seen to exceed the response of a class E site. These results imply that both the *VS30* and *VSbedrock* proxies are not the ideal parameters to use for site response approximations and neither is the use of rigid classes represented by one design spectrum. On the contrary, this continues to support the idea that site-specific response analysis is required, especially for sites characterised by a buried low-velocity layer.

*Left: The hypothetical VS profiles used for the test. Right: The resulting 5% damped response spectra of the used*

*Graphs showing the variation of the amplification factors with VS profile characteristics [27].*

Low-velocity layers are known to have the ability to amplify and lengthen the duration of earthquake ground motion. However, their effect when found buried

**5. Conclusion**

**156**

**Figure 14.**

*Earthquakes - From Tectonics to Buildings*

**Figure 15.**

*profiles and the EC8 design spectra.*

*Earthquakes - From Tectonics to Buildings*

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