Space-Time Trade-off of Precursory Seismicity in the EEPAS Medium-Term
Forecasting Model Optimized for New Zealand Earthquakes
Abstract
‘Every Earthquake a Precursor According to Scale’ (EEPAS) is a model to
forecast earthquakes within the coming months, years and decades,
depending on magnitude. EEPAS performs well for seismically active
regions including New Zealand (NZ) and has been formally evaluated in
Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) centres
in NZ and California, USA. It has been used for practical forecasting in
NZ for nearly a decade. An EEPAS forecast is formed by accumulating the
contributions from past earthquakes to the expectation of future
earthquakes. It uses the precursory scale increase (Ψ) phenomenon along
with three predictive spatial, temporal and magnitude scaling relations.
For a particular mainshock, Ψ is identified as a prior sharp increase in
the occurrence of minor earthquakes. Each identification is represented
by a value of precursor magnitude MP, precursor time TP and precursory
area AP. An algorithm to automatically identify Ψ was developed and
applied to real and synthetic earthquake catalogs. Multiple
identifications of Ψ were obtained for most mainshocks. A trade-off
between AP and TP was observed among such multiple identifications.
Here, we examine the implications of the trade-off for the EEPAS
temporal and spatial scaling parameters aT and σA. The EEPAS parameters
were initially fitted to the NZ earthquake catalog from 1986-2006. The
EEPAS parameters are now refitted with a sequence of fixed values for aT
and then for σA. The range of fixed values constrain the respective
temporal and spatial scales to vary by a factor of a hundred. Results
confirm the existence of a similar space-time trade-off in EEPAS as in
Ψ, with large aT values being associated with small σA values and vice
versa. We conclude that the space-time trade-off is an intrinsic feature
of precursory seismicity. This exists independently of other influences,
such as the local strain rate, that may contribute to scatter in the
predictive scaling relations. Mixing EEPAS models with parameters along
the trade-off line should improve forecasting.