Community Online Resource for Statistical Seismicity Analysis

Abstract

Statistical analysis of seismicity is critical for understanding earthquake observations, testing proposed prediction and forecast methods, and assessing seismic hazard. Unfortunately, despite its importance to seismology—especially to those studies that potentially impact public policy—statistical seismology is mostly ignored in the education of seismologists, and there has been no central repository for relevant software. To remedy these deficiencies, and with the broader goal of enhancing the quality of statistical seismology research, we have begun building the Community Online Resource for Statistical Seismicity Analysis (CORSSA). CORSSA is an educational platform that is designed to be authoritative, up-to-date, prominent, and useful. We anticipate an audience that ranges from beginning graduate students to experienced researchers. Every co-author of this article has served as a referee for at least one seismology manuscript in which the author(s) made a questionable or incorrect application or interpretation of statistics. We suspect that most readers have had a similar experience. This is not a matter of stupidity—not even the important kind championed by Schwartz (2008)—but rather a lack of understanding and/or awareness of sometimes sophisticated mathematical concepts and how they should be applied to uncertain data. We seek to fill this gap in knowledge, understanding, and application, and to promote excellence in statistical seismology, by providing the information and resources necessary to understand and implement the best practices, with the hope that readers will apply these methods to their own research. Given that seismology is a field of applied physics, it is reasonable that, starting with only Hooke's law, students are taught to derive the wave equation, Snell's law, reflection/refraction coefficients, and the behavior of surface waves. But seismology is also increasingly becoming a field of applied statistics, and few seismology students are taught even the most basic statistical methods let alone the underlying theory. For instance, while most …