Abstract

Pujol has made certain observations on the papers by Das et al. (2014) and that of Gasperini et al. (2015). He discussedthetheoreticalbackgroundoftheresearchworkbeing undertaken for magnitude conversion problems. The efficiency of the statistical regression model generally is based on the closeness between the predicted and the observed values, and it is statistically proven that the new general orthogonal regression (GOR) approach suggested by Das and coauthors provides improved estimates, especially for magnitude data pairs
mb;Mw. A dataset of 19,466 global moment magnitude (Mw) values estimated from body-wave magnitudes (mb) shows that 65% of the total data yields betterresultsthroughthenewGORapproachcomparedwiththe conventional GOR approach for error variance value 0.2. This value further increases when η≤0:2 and, therefore, statistically it is better to use the new GOR approach than the conventionalapproach,atleastinthecaseofmb andMw data pairs for η≤2. Hence, unified moment magnitude catalogs prepared using the new GOR approach will be useful for realistic seismic hazard assessment.