Proposing an optimal input feature combination for estimating ground response spectra using machine learning: a study in New Zealand
摘要
Three machine learning (ML) models, which are Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGB), and hybrid XGB-RF, were employed in this study using the New Zealand ground motion database, with 5% damped pseudo-spectral acceleration (PSA) as the target variable. The relative importance of 15 input features was assessed using four different approaches. Based on the resulting rankings, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to examine the direct impact of each input feature on the prediction accuracy of the models. An optimal combination (CB) consisting of the six most influential features was selected to develop the proposed PSA prediction models. All ML-based models demonstrated strong predictive performance, achieving the coefficient of determination (