An earthquake of September 7, 1999 (M5.9) has occurred in the Athens (Attika) area and was felt in almost all central Greece. The earthquake caused a lot of damage and extensive loss of life. The most damaged region is located within a distance of 10 km from the epicenter and numerous modem buildings and industrial facilities collapsed. The accelerograms, which have been recorded during the main event, are processed and compared with the empirical predictive relations proposed for Greece. For each record, the bracketed and significant duration as well as various energy-related measures are estimated. The correlation of these measures with the macroseismic intensity of the particular accelerographic site is then examined. Thus, the destructiveness of the individual records, based solely on the analysis of the ground motion process, is established. The influence of duration and frequency content on structural damage is then incorporated into the response spectral values via the adoption of novel site-dependent probabilistic 3Dspectra. Finally all the above characteristics are compared in order to select the strong-motion properties and response spectral parameters that encapsulate the damage potential of the seismic action and therefore are best suited for design purposes
