Seismic trends in Indian plate: A study on epicentral characteristics by using a driven iterated function system

Abstract

This paper studies the trends exhibited by earthquake epicenters around the Indian tectonic Plate with respect to time. For this study, a novel method based on a modified Iterated Function System has been used. The modified Chaos Game Representation plots generated for the study gave characteristic images implying that the occurrence of earthquakes in some specific combinations showed higher preference around the study area. The statistical data on the number of different combinations of earthquake occurrences were identified from these images. The seismicity trends over different periods are compared to the current seismic trend, and their difference is quantified by using a statistical tool called proximity index. The study proves that the patterns exhibited by earthquakes are independent of the number of earthquakes, and the current seismic trends exhibited by the Indian Plate show a high resemblance with the seismic trend during the years 1975–1988.