Black swans, power laws, and dragon-kings: Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, wildfires, floods, and SOC models

Extreme events that change global society have been characterized as black swans. The frequency-size distributions of many natural phenomena are often well approximated by power-law (fractal) distributions. An important question is whether the probability of extreme events can be estimated by extrap...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The European physical journal. ST, Special topics Special topics, 2012-05, Vol.205 (1), p.167-182
Main Authors: Sachs, M. K., Yoder, M. R., Turcotte, D. L., Rundle, J. B., Malamud, B. D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atomic
Classical and Continuum Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Materials Science
Measurement Science and Instrumentation
Molecular
Optical and Plasma Physics
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Review
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Summary:Extreme events that change global society have been characterized as black swans. The frequency-size distributions of many natural phenomena are often well approximated by power-law (fractal) distributions. An important question is whether the probability of extreme events can be estimated by extrapolating the power-law distributions. Events that exceed these extrapolations have been characterized as dragon-kings. In this paper we consider extreme events for earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, landslides and floods. We also consider the extreme event behavior of three models that exhibit self-organized criticality (SOC): the slider-block, forest-fire, and sand-pile models. Since extrapolations using power-laws are widely used in probabilistic hazard assessment, the occurrence of dragon-king events have important practical implications.
ISSN:1951-6355
1951-6401
DOI:10.1140/epjst/e2012-01569-3