Don, what you have outlined would in my own opinion be called a “safe” prediction. That means that it is geared to make people in the scientific community happy.

My own opinion of a “good” prediction would be one which saves some lives. After all, that is I believe the ultimate goal here.

For example,

There are now advanced earthquake forecasting programs running in a number of countries. China would probably be tops. They are also running in the Philippines, Greece, and Turkey. I think there is also something running in Taiwan but am not certain of that. It is hard for me to tell exactly what the Japanese are doing.

If you were to contact people in those countries and say, “I am expecting an 8.5 magnitude earthquake somewhere in the world in the next few day” and they believed you, then they could check their own data and see if it might be headed in their direction. If their own data indicated to them that it was then they could issue an alert and try to get people out of the expected destruction area.

So, that forecast which you circulated had almost none of the details you proposed are necessary. But if it resulted in some lives being saved I would regard it as a good and useful forecast.

An important point here is that it appears to be difficult for anyone to generate a complete forecast on his or her own. However, it does appear to be possible to collect partial data from a variety of sources, combine and evaluate them, and then at times generate an accurate forecast. Researchers with whom I am talking are engaged in efforts to do just that.