Earthquake prediction, societal implications

Abstract

“If I were a brilliant scientist, I would be working on earthquake prediction.” This is a statement from a Los Angeles radio talk show I heard just after the Northridge earthquake of January 17, 1994. Five weeks later, at a monthly meeting of the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), where more than two hundred scientists and engineers gathered to exchange notes on the earthquake, a distinguished French geologist who works on earthquake faults in China envied me for working now in southern California. This place is like northeastern China 20 years ago, when high seismicity and research activities led to the successful prediction of the Haicheng earthquake of February 4, 1975 with magnitude 7.3. A difficult question still haunting us [Aki, 1989] is whether the Haicheng prediction was founded on the physical reality of precursory phenomena or on the wishful thinking of observers subjected to the political pressure which encouraged precursor reporting. It is, however, true that a successful life‐saving prediction like the Haicheng prediction can only be carried out by the coordinated efforts of decision makers and physical scientists.