TY  - JOUR
A1  - Shcherbakov, Robert
A1  - Zhuang, Jiancang
A1  - Zöller, Gert
A1  - Ogata, Yosihiko
T1  - Forecasting the magnitude of the largest expected earthquake
JF  - Nature Communications
N2  - The majority of earthquakes occur unexpectedly and can trigger subsequent sequences of events that can culminate in more powerful earthquakes. This self-exciting nature of seismicity generates complex clustering of earthquakes in space and time. Therefore, the problem of constraining the magnitude of the largest expected earthquake during a future time interval is of critical importance in mitigating earthquake hazard. We address this problem by developing a methodology to compute the probabilities for such extreme earthquakes to be above certain magnitudes. We combine the Bayesian methods with the extreme value theory and assume that the occurrence of earthquakes can be described by the Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence process. We analyze in detail the application of this methodology to the 2016 Kumamoto, Japan, earthquake sequence. We are able to estimate retrospectively the probabilities of having large subsequent earthquakes during several stages of the evolution of this sequence.
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11958-4
SN  - 2041-1723
VL  - 10
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  -