The Theoretical and Practical Foundations of Strong Earthquake Predictability

Earthquakes and the tsunamis they produce are the world’s most devastating natural disasters, affecting more than 100 countries. Not surprisingly, the problem of earthquake prediction has occupied scientists’ minds for more than two thousand years. This paper provides theoretical and practical arguments regarding the possibility of predicting strong and major earthquakes worldwide. Many strong and major earthquakes can be predicted at least two to five months in advance, based on identifying stressed areas that begin to behave abnormally before strong events, with the size of these areas corresponding to Dobrovolsky’s formula. We make predictions by combining knowledge from many different disciplines: physics, geophysics, seismology, geology, and earth science, among others. An integrated approach is used to identify anomalies and make predictions, including satellite remote sensing techniques and data from ground-based instruments. Terabytes of information are currently processed every day with many different multi-parametric prediction systems applied thereto. Alerts are issued if anomalies are confirmed by a few different systems. It has been found that geophysical patterns of earthquake preparation and stress accumulation are similar for all key seismic regions. The same earthquake prediction methodologies and systems have been successfully applied in global practice since 2013, with the technology successfully used to retrospectively test against more than 700 strong and major earthquakes since 1970. In other words, the earthquake prediction problem has largely been solved. Throughout 2017-2021, results were presented to more than 160 professors from 63 countries.

Global Earthquake Prediction Systems

Terra Seismic can predict most major earthquakes (M6.2 or greater) at least 2 - 5 months before they will strike. Global earthquake prediction is based on determinations of the stressed areas that will start to behave abnormally before major earthquakes. The size of the observed stressed areas roughly corresponds to estimates calculated from Dobrovolsky’s formula. To identify abnormalities and make predictions, Terra Seismic applies various methodologies, including satellite remote sensing methods and data from ground-based instruments. We currently process terabytes of information daily, and use more than 80 different multiparameter prediction systems. Alerts are issued if the abnormalities are confirmed by at least five different systems. We observed that geophysical patterns of earthquake development and stress accumulation are generally the same for all key seismic regions. Thus, the same earthquake prediction methodologies and systems can be applied successfully worldwide. Our technology has been used to retrospectively test data gathered since 1970 and it successfully detected about 90 percent of all significant quakes over the last 50 years.