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The UHS is derived form a Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis (PSHA) and can
therefore be deaggregated just as we saw in Class 7 for peak ground acceleration
(PGA).
For more information on how to practically carry out a deaggregation, please see
the handout that accompanied HW#2 on PSHA.
Below is shown an example of the type of information that can be obtained from a
deaggregation of a UHS:

Observation
Deaggregation of the UHS is useful in the construction of the Conditional Mean
Spectrum (discussed later) as it tells us the most likely distance and magnitude of
events contributing the seismic hazard at a given spectral period (e.g. 1 s in the
example above).

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Observation
The UHS is an envelope of maximum spectral quantities. It is not for any given
ground motion (i.e. event). The following question can therefore be asked: for a
single ground motion (i.e. seismic event), what is the likelihood that all spectral
ordinates reach the threshold levels indicated by the UHS?
The answer is relatively low. In other words, an event with a spectral peak at a
given period (e.g. 1 s for the example below) will most likely have lower spectral
peaks at the other periods as compared to the UHS.
This observation has led to the development of the Conditional Mean Spectrum
(CMS). Notice how for the example below the CMS has lower spectral ordinates
then the UHS outside the period (1 s) on which we have conditioned.

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