S038-0005
Operational earthquake forecasting in Italy: the take stock of the first 10 years

Friday, 11 December 2020
Poster
Ilaria Spassiani, National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Rome, Italy, Anna Maria Lombardi, INGV National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, Roma, Italy, Giuseppe Falcone, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Palermo, Italy, Maura Murru, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Rome, Italy and Warner Marzocchi, The University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy
Abstract:
The Operational Earthquake Forecasting (OEF) experiment represents one of the more effective approaches to deliver reliable forecasts that help communities prepare for potentially destructive earthquakes. OEF comprises «procedures for gathering and disseminating authoritative information» about spatiotemporal dependence of seismic hazards; it provides the probabilistic forecast that an earthquake will occur or not in a particular geographic region, magnitude range and temporal interval.

The OEF in Italy started in 2009, on proposal of the International Commission for Earthquake Forecasting for Civil Protection, nominated by the Italian government after L'Aquila Mw 6.3 earthquake occurred on 6 April 2009. According to the standards proposed by the CSEP, OEF has been performed on a specific 0.1° x 0.1° grid lattice covering the whole Italian territory. The experiment is based on a stochastic model, named Bayesian model, given by a weighted combination of three models, typically used in statistical seismology, that are, ETAS [Lombardi&Marzocchi (2010)], ETES [Falcone et al. (2010)] and STEP [Gerstenberger et al. (2005)].

Each day of the forecasting window 2009-2019 we produced time-dependent seismic maps representing the weekly number of earthquakes, expected by Bayesian model, that occur in each cell of the spatial grid, above a fixed threshold magnitude or macroseismic intensity.

In this analysis we gather and take stock of the results obtained in these first 10 years of experiment, to the aim of assessing the reliability of the forecasts obtained. This is done by performing several statistical tests, which would also give a clue on possible improvements in the modelling behind OEF, insights on seismic activity in Italy, and hints to identify proper thresholds for activating the state of alert procedures.

Ref.

Lombardi, Marzocchi (2010) The ETAS model for daily forecasting of Italian seismicity in the CSEP experiment. Ann. Geophys. 53(3): 155-164

Falcone et al. (2010) Short-term and long-term earthquake occurrence models for Italy: ETES, ERS and LTST. Ann. Geophys. 53: 41–50

Gerstenberger et al. (2005) Real-time forecasts of tomorrow’s earthquakes in California. Nature 435, 328–331

Marzocchi et al. (2014) The Establishment of an Operational Earthquake Forecasting System in Italy. Seism. Res. Lett. 85(5)

<< Previous Abstract | Next Abstract >>