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(NAS Colloquium) Earthquake Prediction The Scientific Challenge (1996) / Chapter Skim
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Earthquake prediction: The scientific challenge
Pages 3719-3720

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From page 3719...
... A second thread of earlier prediction research was the presumption that small earthquakes were scaled-down versions of large ones, and hence the supposition was made that the study of small earthquakes would reveal important truths about large ones, a model if not driven by the scaling implicit in the Gutenberg-Richter distribution, then at least with the notion of scaling lurking in the background. These ideas suggest that simple isolated fractures in an elastic solid have a distribution of stresses and slips that are scaled only by the sizes of the cracks and hence whatever precursors, and postcursors for that matter, that might be observed will also be similarly scaled.
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From page 3720...
... It is clear that the scientific issues must be understood before routine predictions can be announced, which in a generalized sense is an engineering problem. There are other issues connected with earthquake prediction that were not discussed at the colloquium presented here: neither the organization of national programs in earthquake prediction, nor the engineering problems, nor the problems of societal response to possible future predictions in the three different time scales.
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Key Terms

  • earthquake prediction
  • prediction research
  • stress field
  • seismic recordings
  • societal response

  • time interval
  • generous support
  • clustering remain
  • significant perturbations
  • colloquium entitled

  • roughly equal
  • precursory state
  • held february
  • largest earthquakes
  • optimistic tone

  • simple isolated
  • cover intervals
  • prieta earthquake
  • modeling research
  • paper serves

  • beach earthquake
  • promising approach
  • following papers
  • remains remote
  • whatever precursors

  • ancient faulting
  • keiiti aki
  • shadows cast
  • instrumental era
  • individual basis


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