Forecasting of the first hour aftershocks by means of the perceived magnitude

• Published in: Nature communications 2019-07, Vol.10 (1), p.2953-10, Article 2953
• Main Authors: Lippiello, E., Petrillo, G., Godano, C., Tramelli, A., Papadimitriou, E., Karakostas, V.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 704/2151/2809; 704/2151/508; Aftershocks; Earthquakes; Forecasting; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Seismic activity; Velocity
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10763-3

The majority of strong earthquakes takes place a few hours after a mainshock, promoting the interest for a real time post-seismic forecasting, which is, however, very inefficient because of the incompleteness of available catalogs. Here we present a novel method that uses, as only information, the ground velocity recorded during the first 30 min after the mainshock and does not require that signals are transferred and elaborated by operational units. The method considers the logarithm of the mainshock ground velocity, its peak value defined as the perceived magnitude and the subsequent temporal decay. We conduct a forecast test on the nine M   ≥ 6 mainshocks that have occurred since 2013 in the Aegean area. We are able to forecast the number of aftershocks recorded during the first 3 days after each mainshock with an accuracy smaller than 18% in all cases but one with an accuracy of 36%. The timing and locations of aftershocks following the initial impact of an earthquake are key to mitigate potential further hazards. Here the authors use the seismic ground velocity as input parameter to provide accurate probabilities of post seismic occurrence within 30 min of the main shock.