Earthquake Triggering Processes – December 26, 2011

The latest update for the following Earthquake Triggering Web page was just about finished. So I decided to store it on my new Web site.

http://www.earthquake-research.com/Earthquake-Triggering.html

There are no references to those research papers I mentioned on that Web page so far. I need to go searching in my files etc. for them.

A seismologist and his group of researchers did the work using what I refer to as the “brute force” method of research. That involves loading tremendous amounts of data into a powerful computer and just telling it to check this and that for significant associations.

That method is not very refined. But it can produce useful data if there is actually something there to see.

They did find associations like that in my (and their) opinion with their first paper (not formally published as far as I am aware). However, the earthquake triggering model they used was very basic. And so the associations were not that much above average probability.

I explained to them that if they were to use the model that I myself have developed they would likely get much better results. However they apparently decided that this is not the type of research that they want to do for the rest of their lives and eventually stopped the research from what I can see.

The results they reported with their second paper that was formally published looked quite impressive. But I told them that I myself really don’t understand what those associations they looked at actually mean. I would need to spend a lot more time trying to understand them.

More later on this when I have time. I need to get another earthquake related project moving along.

These are personal opinions.