Non-stationarity and internal correlations of the occurrence process of mining-induced seismic events

Abstract

A point process, e.g., the seismic process, is potentially predictable when it is non-stationary, internally correlated or both. In this paper, an analysis of the occurrence process of mining-induced seismic events from Rudna copper mine in Poland is presented. Stationarity and internal correlation are investigated in complete seismic time series and segmentally in subseries demonstrating relatively stable seismicity rates. It is shown that the complete seismic series are non-stationary; however, most of their shorter subseries become stationary. In the stationary subseries, the distribution of interevent time is closer to the exponential distribution, which is characteristic for the Poisson process. However, in most of these subseries, the differences between the interevent time and Poisson distributions are still significant, revealing correlations among seismic events.