Comment on the report "Operational Earthquake Forecasting" by the International Commission on Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection

Stuart Crampin Stuart Crampin

doi:10.4401/ag-5516

Abstract

<p>The recently published report Operational Earthquake Forecasting: State of Knowledge and Guidelines for Utilization by the International Commission on Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection (ICEF) presupposes that there is no method for the short-term prediction of large earthquakes that has been demonstrated to be both reliable and skillful. This is no longer correct. Earthquakes can be deterministically stress-forecast by using shear-wave splitting to monitor stress-accumulation in the rock mass surrounding the earthquake source. This new understanding of fluid-rock deformation means that the recommendations of the ICEF Report are no longer appropriate. This comment reviews this new understanding and suggests that the way forward for operational earthquake forecasting in Italy is to install one or more controlled-source three-borehole Stress-Monitoring Sites and use shear-wave splitting to monitor stress-accumulation and stress-forecast all damaging (M ≥ 5) earthquakes in Italy.</p>

Highlights

The report Operational Earthquake Forecasting: State of Knowledge and Guidelines for Utilization was published by the International Commission on Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection (ICEF) [Jordan et al 2011]
The 13 recommendations of the ICEF Report in Table 1 are based on the mistaken assumption that "reliable and skillful deterministic earthquake prediction is not yet possible" [Jordan et al 2011]
In this comment I have outlined how observations of seismic shear-wave splitting monitored at a three-borehole Stress-Monitoring Site (SMS) in central Italy could monitor stress-accumulation and stress-relaxation before all damaging (M ≥ 5) earthquakes within 1000km of the SMS [Crampin and Gao 2012a]

Summary

Introduction

The report Operational Earthquake Forecasting: State of Knowledge and Guidelines for Utilization was published by the International Commission on Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection (ICEF) [Jordan et al 2011]. "The goal of operational earthquake forecasting is to provide communities with information about seismic hazards that can be used to make decisions in advance of potentially destructive earthquakes" where "One of the outstanding challenges in the operational use of probabilistic forecasts is in translating them into decisionmaking in a low-probability environment" [Executive Summary, ICEF Report, Jordan et al 2009]. The Commission omits a new understanding of fluid-rock deformation, a New Geophysics [Crampin 2006, Crampin and Peacock 2008], that demonstrates that seismic shear-wave splitting monitors stress-accumulation in almost all in situ rocks before release by earthquakes This means that the times, magnitudes, and in some cases faultbreaks of impending large earthquakes can be stress-forecast in a high-probability environment [Crampin 2011, Crampin et al 1999, Crampin et al 2008], where the term stressforecasting is used rather than prediction to emphasize the different formalism. Public communication of H: DPC, in accordance with social-science principles on effective public communication and in concert with partner earthquake information: organizations, should continuously inform the public about the seismic situation in Italy based on probabilistic forecasting

The New Geophysics: the new understanding of fluidrock deformation

Monitoring fluid-rock deformation and stressforecasting earthquakes

Findings

Conclusions