Earthquake forecasting means predicting when and where an earthquake is likely to occur in the future. This helps scientists and authorities to prepare and take necessary measures to minimize the damage and keep people safe.
Full definition
They range from
improving earthquake forecasting and developing early - warning systems to understanding how to increase the resistance of existing buildings to damage and how to preserve electricity and water infrastructure.
Jordan chaired the International Commission on
Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection formed by the Italian government in the aftermath of L'Aquila to assess the scientific knowledge of earthquake predictability and provide guidelines for effectively gathering, updating and disseminating information to the public.
In the article, Thomas Jordan, an American seismologist who led an international review of
earthquake forecasting in Italy after the disaster, said the debate with Giuliani (whose technique is considered unreliable, at best) got the commission «trapped into a conversation with a yes / no answer.»
«We've all been taken aback by what happened in L'Aquila,» says Thomas Jordan, a seismologist at the University of Southern California and chairman of an international commission
on earthquake forecasting that was set up after the disaster.
The commission, which submitted its findings in May, recommended several measures, including real - time, interagency sharing of seismic data and the development of
new earthquake forecasting methods.
Niu and colleagues believe these changes are linked to a weakening of the fault, and that monitoring them could lead to more
accurate earthquake forecasts.
A
national earthquake forecasting system combined with data on building vulnerability may help communicate risk of shocks happening — but uncertainties remain
(pdf) None of this
assures earthquake forecasting improvements in the near future, and some scientists worry that public expectations will outpace scientific capabilities.
The commission also cited efforts already underway to
test earthquake forecasting, in particular the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP).
Right now scientists understand far too little about Earth's inner motions to make
reliable earthquake forecasts, and the cost of an unreliable forecast could be huge: Millions of dollars of business would be lost by shutting down San Francisco for a week awaiting a temblor that might never arrive.
For the state's most
recent earthquake forecast in 2015, Field and his colleagues relaxed the model's strict fault segmentation rules and for the first time included the possibility of multiple individual faults rupturing simultaneously.
Corbyn has only recently launched his new
earthquake forecasting service encouraged by the dramatic upsurge of interest in his highly successful long - range weather forecasting.
The JPL - developed QuakeSim is a comprehensive, state - of - the - art software tool for simulating and understanding earthquake fault processes and
improving earthquake forecasting.
Jordan and his colleagues proposed some ways to improve
operational earthquake forecasting, such as providing the public with openly available information about short - term seismic risks.
But
earthquake forecasting «has hardly stood still over 20 - plus years,» Ellsworth notes.
Simons, for one, believes that
earthquake forecasting is a fool's errand.
«Monitoring surface deformation using these remote sensing techniques is a proactive approach to managing the hazards associated with fluid injection, and can help in
earthquake forecasting,» Shirzaei said, according to the release.
Many avenues for
earthquake forecasting have been explored, from prior changes in animal behaviour to electromagnetic signals.
Not only does the work have potential significance to
earthquake forecasting, Johnson said, but the approach is far - reaching, applicable to potentially all failure scenarios including nondestructive testing of industrial materials brittle failure of all kinds, avalanches and other events.