Neural networks are investigated for predicting the magnitude of the largest seismic event in the following month based on the analysis of eight mathematically computed parameters known as seismicity indicators. The indicators are selected based on the Gutenberg-Richter and characteristic earthquake magnitude distribution and also on the conclusions drawn by recent earthquake prediction studies. Since there is no known established mathematical or even empirical relationship between these indicators and the location and magnitude of a succeeding earthquake in a particular time window, the problem is modeled using three different neural networks: a feed-forward Levenberg-Marquardt backpropagation (LMBP) neural network, a recurrent neural network, and a radial basis function (RBF) neural network. Prediction accuracies of the models are evaluated using four different statistical measures: the probability of detection, the false alarm ratio, the frequency bias, and the true skill score or R score. The models are trained and tested using data for two seismically different regions: Southern California and the San Francisco bay region. Overall the recurrent neural network model yields the best prediction accuracies compared with LMBP and RBF networks. While at the present earthquake prediction cannot be made with a high degree of certainty this research provides a scientific approach for evaluating the short-term seismic hazard potential of a region.
A computational approach is presented for predicting the location and time of occurrence of future moderate-to-large earthquakes in an approximate sense based on neural network modeling and using a vector of eight seismicity indicators as input. Two different methods are explored. In the first method, a large seismic region is subdivided into several small subregions and the temporal historical earthquake record is divided into a number of small equal time periods. Seismicity indicators are computed for each subregion for each time period and their relationship to the magnitude of the largest earthquake occurring in that subregion during the following time-period is studied using a recurrent neural network. In the second more direct approach, the temporal historical earthquake record is divided into a number of unequal time periods where each period is defined as the time between large earthquakes. Seismicity indicators are computed for each time-period and their relationship to the latitude and longitude of the epicentral location, and time of occurrence of the following major earthquake is studied using a recurrent neural network.
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