Methods for Determining the Epicenter of Strong Earthquake

Abstract

The analysis of seismic sequences is the primary objective for the study of the evolution of seismicity in a particular area, in order to determine a greater awareness of its seismogenic potential. The eventual determination of the epicenters of future earthquakes associated with the expected magnitude can be the tool to better seismic prevention. In this paper, we present some procedures for epicenter prediction of a strong earthquake, developed after a careful analysis of the fluctuations of latitude and longitude values in time and space and distance, between seismic events occurred in a specific area. By analyzing several seismic sequences, whose data have been taken from the numerous catalogs on seismicity, we noticed that the epicenters of the earthquakes that precede the strongest ones, tend to converge towards the epicenter where the strong earthquake will happen, following a pattern and a repetitive directional trend. Analysis of the pattern and trend, which represent the fluctuation of events and distances between pairs of earthquakes, has allowed us to localize the epicentral area of a future earthquake, which more reliably complements the other forecasting methods we have developed in the past. Retrospective tests performed on past seismic sequences have shown that the predictive procedures developed are able to identify in a simple way and in the short term, the area where a strong earthquake is most likely to occur.