Foto del docente

Emanuele Biondini

Research fellow

Department of Physics and Astronomy "Augusto Righi"

Research

Keywords: Earthquakes predictability Statistical seismology

Research and analysis of statistical earthquake forecasting methods:

Earthquake prediction has proved to be a treacherously complex problem for scientists and progress has been slow, much slower than other natural hazards and phenomena. Improving the ability to predict earthquakes remains a major challenge for seismology and is a key objective for the future. Forecasting defines the occurrence of individual future events within space-time bands in which seismic events are examined. They are typically based on the analysis of signals defined as precursors. The search for diagnostic forecasting precursors for earthquakes has been varied over previous decades, and the results often controversial. In this context, the limits of earthquake predictability in Italy and other seismic regions are examined by searching for spatio-temporal phenomena that are potentially candidates for diagnostic precursors. For this purpose, homogeneous and high-resolution seismic catalogues are required. They are used to retrospectively examine the variations in crustal stress before each strong earthquake through a careful analysis of spatio-temporal variations in seismicity rates and the b-value of the Gutenberg-Richter distribution. The latter seems to be related in a linear-inverse way to the accumulation of stress in crustal rocks, and this relationship is also confirmed by laboratory experiments. Therefore, retrospective prediction models are developed, whose efficiency is evaluated using techniques, metrics and indices recognized in the literature.




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