Dear 2cents:

Actually I am in the discovery phase and trying to make sense of what is actually happening. I've had the opportunity to talk with the leading scientist in this regard to ULF emissions, and even he's not had any explanations, so going it alone is really tough.

I am very unhappy with the models, Didier Sornette comes the closest, but she cannot explain why the phase changes are reversible, and we're not left with permanent changes (ref: Mechanochemistry: a Hypothesis for shallow earthquakes)

In regard to your questions, I've not formalized a method yet and not published, because I want to be sure of #3. My mathematical training will insure that #3 is done.

Finally let me say that from looking at hundreds of megabytes of instrument data from the USGS's own networks, that the earth is actually emitting a lot of useful information, but that we still are quite clueless as to what it is saying.