Perturbation of earthquake probability for interacting faults by static Coulomb stress changes

Abstract

This work aims at the assessment of the occurrence probability of future earthquakes on the Italian territory, conditional to the time elapsed since the last characteristic earthquake on a fault and to the history of the following events on the neighbouring active sources. We start from the estimate of the probability of occurrence in the period 2007–2036 for a characteristic earthquake on geological sources, based on a time-dependent renewal model, released in the frame of Project DPC-INGV S2 (2004–2007) “Assessing the seismogenic potential and the probability of strong earthquakes in Italy”. The occurrence rate of a characteristic earthquake is calculated, taking into account both permanent (clock advance) and temporary (rate-and-state) perturbations. The analysis has been carried out on a wide area of Central and Southern Italy, containing 32 seismogenetic sources reported in the DISS 3.0.2 database. The results show that the estimated effect of earthquake interaction in this region is small if compared with the uncertainties affecting the statistical model used for the basic time-dependent hazard assessment.