Project Abstract
|
We addressed the problem of verifying the self-‐consistency of earthquake simulators with the data from which their parameters are drawn. Earthquake simulators are a class of computational simulations which attempt to mirror the topological complexity of fault systems on which earthquakes occur. In addition, the physics of friction and elastic interactions between fault elements can be included in these simulations. Verification of simulations against current observed earthquake seismicity is necessary. We present two methods for addressing this discrepancy: a simplistic approach whereby observed earthquakes are shifted to the nearest fault element and a variation of the Epidemic-‐type aftershock (ETAS) model, which distributes the simulator catalog seismicity over the entire test region. To test these methods, a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) plot was produced by comparing the rate maps f o r t h e f o u r simulators tested in the Tullis et al. testing project to observed m > 6.0 earthquakes since 1980. We found that the nearest-‐neighbor mapping produced poor forecasts, while the modified ETAS method produced rate maps that agreed with observations. |