Application of detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) for short-term earthquake precursor investigation: A case study for January 23, 2018’s Java earthquake

Abstract

By applying detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA), we investigated the short-term earthquake precursor related to the 2018 Banten earthquake. It took place on January 23, 2018. The magnitude of the earthquake is 6.1. DFA is a method to determine the data scaling behavior of time series data. The advantage of using DFA is that we can calculate the scaling behavior of the analyzed data from its trend without understanding more detail of its origin and shape. Our result confirms that the DFA value decreased about two weeks before the earthquake. We also compared the result to the previous studies, which applied spectral density ratio (SDR) to investigate the short-term earthquake precursor related to the M6.1 earthquake. The result shows that the DFA value simultaneously decreased when the spectral density ratio (SDR) associated with the earthquake increased. Furthermore, the result also reveals that the characteristics of DFA value related to the 2018 Banten earthquake are the same as those of the previous study related to the Pelabuhan Ratu earthquake that occurred on September 2, 2009.