Discovering seismic interactions after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake by co-occurring cluster mining

Abstract

In this study, we extract earthquake co-occurrence patterns for investigating mechanical interactions in the affected areas. To extract seismic patterns, both co-occurrence among seismic events in the event sequence and distances between the hypocenters to find hot spots must be considered. Most previous researches, however, have considered only one of these aspects. In contrast, we utilized co-occurring cluster mining to extract seismic patterns by considering both co-occurrence in a sequence and distance between hypocenters. Then, we acquired affected areas and relationships between the co-occurrence patterns and focal mechanisms from the 2011–2012 hypocenter catalog. Some results were consistent with seismological literature. The results include highly affected areas that may indicate asperity, and change of focal mechanisms before and after the Tohoku Earthquake.