TY  - GEN
A1  - Zöller, Gert
T1  - Comment on "Estimation of Earthquake Hazard Parameters from Incomplete Data Files. Part III. Incorporation of Uncertainty of Earthquake-Occurrence Model" by Andrzej Kijko, Ansie Smit, and Markvard A. Sellevoll
T2  - Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
N2  - Kijko et al. (2016) present various methods to estimate parameters that are relevant for probabilistic seismic-hazard assessment. One of these parameters, although not the most influential, is the maximum possible earthquake magnitude m(max). I show that the proposed estimation of m(max) is based on an erroneous equation related to a misuse of the estimator in Cooke (1979) and leads to unstable results. So far, reported finite estimations of m(max) arise from data selection, because the estimator in Kijko et al. (2016) diverges with finite probability. This finding is independent of the assumed distribution of earthquake magnitudes. For the specific choice of the doubly truncated Gutenberg-Richter distribution, I illustrate the problems by deriving explicit equations. Finally, I conclude that point estimators are generally not a suitable approach to constrain m(max).
Y1  - 2017
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/46462
SN  - 0037-1106
SN  - 1943-3573
VL  - 107
SP  - 1975
EP  - 1978
PB  - Seismological Society of America
CY  - Albany
ER  -