Summary | A series of scalar and vector intensity measures is examined to determine their suitability within the seismic risk assessment of liquid storage tanks. Using a surrogate modelling approach on a squat tank that is examined under both anchored and unanchored support conditions, incremental dynamic analysis is adopted to generate the distributions of response parameters conditioned on each of the candidate intensity measures. Efficiency and sufficiency metrics are used in order to perform the intensity measure evaluation for individual failure modes, while a comparison in terms of mean annual frequency of exceedance is performed with respect to a damage state that is mutually governed by the impulsive and convective modes of the tank. The results reveal combinations of spectral acceleration ordinates as adequate predictors, among which the average spectral acceleration is singled out as the optimal solution. The sole exception is found for the sloshing‐controlled modes of failure, where mainly the convective period spectral acceleration is deemed adequate to represent the associated response due to their underlying linear relationship. A computationally efficient method in terms of site hazard analysis is finally proposed to serve in place of the vector‐valued intensity measures, providing a good match for the unanchored tank considered and a more conservative one for the corresponding anchored system.