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Earthquake Study Casts Doubt on Early Warnings but Hints at Improved Forecasting

posted by janrinok on Friday September 06 2019, @04:50AM   

"exec" writes:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A recent study investigated around 100,000 localized seismic events to search for patterns in the data. University of Tokyo Professor Satoshi Ide discovered that earthquakes of differing magnitudes have more in common than was previously thought. This suggests development of early warning systems may be more difficult than hoped. But conversely, similarities between some events indicate that predictable characteristics may aid researchers attempting to forecast seismic events.

Since the 1980s seismologists -- earthquake researchers -- have wondered how feasible it might be to predict how an earthquake will behave given some information about its initial conditions. In particular whether you can tell the eventual magnitude based on seismic measurements near the point of origin, or epicenter. Most researchers consider this idea too improbable given the randomness of earthquake behavior, but Ide thinks there's more to it than that.

"Some pairs of large and small earthquakes start with exactly the same shaking characteristics, so we cannot tell the magnitude of an earthquake from initial seismic observations," explained Ide. "This is bad news for earthquake early warning. However, for future forecasting attempts, given this symmetry between earthquakes of different magnitudes, it is good to know they are not completely random."

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Original Submission

• Ummm... those Italian seismologists in jail?!? (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 06 2019, @07:06AM

  by c0lo (156) on Friday September 06 2019, @07:06AM (#890420) Journal

  2009_L'Aquila_earthquake - Prosecutions [wikipedia.org]

  Boschi had called a major earthquake "unlikely", while not entirely excluding the possibility. De Bernardinis had informed the public that there was "no danger".[10] The prosecutors cited a scientific opinion that the low-level tremors ahead of 6 April quake were typical of the seismic activity preceding major convulsions, but the defendants had classified them as a "normal geological phenomenon".[11] They were criticised in court for being "falsely reassuring" and Judge Marco Billi gave them a six-year jail sentence on 22 October 2012,[9] reasoning that they had provided "an assessment of the risks that was incomplete, inept, unsuitable, and criminally mistaken".[97][98] They were also banned from ever holding public office again and had to pay court costs and damages.

  Enzo Boschi, one of the convicted, said, "I thought I would have been acquitted. I still don't understand what I was convicted of."[9] His co-defendant Claudio Eva said that "it was a very Italian and medieval decision."[99] Their lawyers announced they would appeal the verdict, and it will not be finally decided until it is heard by the appellate court.

  The verdicts were strongly criticised by the British media and public.[9] The journal Nature ran an editorial stating that the "verdict is perverse and the sentence ludicrous."[100] Malcolm Sperrin, a British scientist, said:

  If the scientific community is to be penalised for making predictions that turn out to be incorrect, or for not accurately predicting an event that subsequently occurs, then scientific endeavour will be restricted to certainties only, and the benefits that are associated with findings, from medicine to physics, will be stalled.[9]

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  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

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