Annual Earthquake Potential Consultation: A Real Forward Prediction Test in China

Yongxian Zhang, Zhongliang Wu, Xiaotao Zhang, & Gang Li

Published August 15, 2017, SCEC Contribution #7887, 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #005

We briefly reviewed the annual consultation on the likelihood of earthquakes in continental China since 1970s. The frames of the Summary Research Report on the National Key Earthquake Potential Areas in 2013 and 2014 were taken as two case studies. The real forward prediction test for over 4 decades since 1970s has unique scientific and practical merits either as an active response to the social needs for mitigation of seismic disaster while the earthquake prediction remains to be a challenge problem scientifically. This chapter summarizes the National Annual Consultation from 1970s to the present, its scientific outputs, methodology used for analysis, and in-depth philosophy guiding the Consultation and proposed further developments and improvements.

In the perspective of statistical seismology, the long-time persistence, real forward forecast test, and combination of the information of different disciplines make this approach unique amongst the endeavors studying the predictability of earthquakes. Through wide discussions at the Meeting, it is very helpful to raise new ideas as well as the scientific problems in earthquake prediction to be studied further.

However, some of the aspects in the annual consultation, such as the methodology for the identification of anomalies, the subjective effects of the panel discussion combining different kinds of information, and the interpretation and application of the output message from the annual consultation, still have a large space for improvement.

Communicating with international seismological communities is especially needed for the exchange of scientific ideas and research results and for the cooperation in applying the algorithms of statistical seismology and geodynamics to the annual consultation. More earthquake prediction theories, models and methods need to be developed and more observation data need to be obtained to support earthquake simulation.

In any case, the annual consultation is one of the contributions of Chinese seismological community to the test of earthquake forecast schemes. There is much to be done in either the introduction or the improvement of this approach.

Citation
Zhang, Y., Wu, Z., Zhang, X., & Li, G. (2017, 08). Annual Earthquake Potential Consultation: A Real Forward Prediction Test in China. Poster Presentation at 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Earthquake Forecasting and Predictability (EFP)