Monte Carlo Studies of Relations between Fractal Dimensions in Monofractal Data Sets

Abstract

Within the fractal approach to studying the distribution of seismic event locations, different fractal dimension definitions and estimation algorithms are in use. Although one expects that for the same data set, values of different dimensions will be different, it is usually anticipated that the direction of fractal dimension changes among different data sets will be the same for every fractal dimension. Mutual relations between the three most popular fractal dimensions, namely: the capacity, cluster and correlation dimensions, have been investigated in the present work. The studies were performed on the Monte Carlo generated data sets. The analysis has shown that dependence of the fractal dimensions on epicenter distribution, and relations among the fractal dimensions, are complex and variable. Neither values nor even inequalities among dimension estimates are preserved when different fractal dimensions are used. The correlation and the capacity dimensions seem to be good tools to trace collinear tendencies of eipicenters while the cluster dimension is more appropriate to studying uniform clustering of points.