  Deformation analyses of tailings dams under dynamic conditions require using
earthquake records as input loading. Moreover, these records must represent the
local seismicity, expressed by ground motion power indicators denominated
intensity measures (IM). The ability and accuracy to describe the
characteristics of a seismic record play a fundamental role in earthquake
engineering and damage assessment of geotechnical facilities. None of the
existing IMs represents a robust enough predictor of a given seismic demand
(e.g., residual displacements). Different signals may generate a wide spectrum
of results, with diverse effects that could produce insignificant damage to
global failure depending on the structure. Usual engineering procedures select
a huge number of records to overcome this limitation and develop a large set of
numerical simulations to bound the uncertainty of the results, which becomes a
time-consuming approach. This paper presents a new high-fidelity seismic IM to
perform more accurate ground motion {selection}, which captures the spectral
properties of the record for the frequency content that the dam does not
filter. This IM represents a way to estimate beforehand a seismic demand,
expressed, for instance, in terms of displacements. The proposed IM is applied
to a finite element model for an upstream tailings dam cross-section, using a
constitutive model capable of capturing dynamic liquefaction. The obtained
results show that our proposal gives highly reliable correlations with
different selected demands. Comparisons with classical IMs are also discussed,
showing that our proposal emerges as a practical solution to a large dated
discussion within our community.
