A Stochastical Model for the Earthquake Occurences in Turkey

Year 2008, Volume: 12 Issue: 3, - , 09.04.2009

Gamze Özel

Abstract

The fields of seismology and earthquake engineering deal with the studies for earthquake predictions, hazard assessments and the prevention of possible damage due to destructive earthquakes. Various kind of statistical models are used for the earthquake occurences. The most familiar model is a Poisson process for random series of events. However, the Poisson process is insufficient if the incorporation of more information about the seismic process is required. Recently, a compound Poisson process has been proposed an alternative to the Poisson process for the earthquake analysis. In this study, the compound Poisson process is introduced and the probabilities of earthquake numbers with magnitude M ³ 5.0 which will occur within 3 and 6 months; 5 and 10 years have been obtained for Turkey from the Poisson process. Then, it is shown that the aftershock sequences follow a geometric distribution. By this way, the probabilities of total number of aftershocks which will occur within one year and two years with magnitude M ³ 4.0 in Turkey are obtained from the compound Poisson process. Finally, the expected values of main shocks and total number of aftershocks which will occur within one year and two years are computed. The results show that the earthquake occurrence probability with magnitude M ³ 5.0 increases, whereas the probability of total number of aftershocks with magnitude M ³ 4.0 decreases in Turkey as the time increases. Besides, the total aftershock number with magnitude M ³ 4.0 , after a main shock with magnitude M ³ 5.0, equals to zero with the probability 0.48 within one year. The findings also indicate that approximately 130 main shocks with M ³ 5.0 , 28 aftershocks with magnitude M ³ 4.0 are expected within 30 years in Turkey.

Keywords

-