Past, current and future of Japanese national program for earthquake prediction research

Abstract

The Japanese national earthquake prediction program started in 1962 with a blue print for the scope and direction of research to follow. Substantial time and efforts were subsequently devoted to the construction of new observation networks and the study on the earthquake generation mechanisms. An important result has been the recognition of the great difficulty in identifying creditable precursors due to a diversity of earthquake generation process. In recent years, a new age of near real time observations of Earth's crustal processes by dense arrays of seismic and the GPS (Global Positioning System) stations has arrived. The results of the real time monitoring may lead to a new approach in the earthquake prediction research, i.e., the quantitative forecasting of the crustal activities. The new national program, which inherits its essential observational network from all the previous programs, emphasizes the importance of modeling as well as monitoring for a sound scientific development of earthquake prediction research.

Earthquake hazard assessment in seismogenic systems through Markovian artificial neural network estimation: an application to the Japan area

“…Wyss et al (2007) and Katsumata and Kasahara (1999) used the statistics of seismicity to evaluate seismic quiescence before the Izu-Oshima 1990 and the Kurile 1994 earthquakes, respectively. Other efforts focused on improving earthquake prediction in Japan are described in Hirata (2004). The model we propose here differs from the abovementioned models mainly in that we introduce the concept of system and explore the possibility of it having a Markovian behavior.…”

Introduction to the special section for the 2004 Mid-Niigata Prefecture Earthquake

“…The area is also located in the Niigata-Kobe Tectonic Zone, where a high strain rate of over 0.1 ppm/y is observed by the continuous GPS network (Sagiya, 2004). In the new national earthquake prediction research program, the preparation process of an intra-plate inland earthquake begins to be understood in terms of the heterogeneous structure of the crust (Hirata, 2004). The data from the present mid-Niigata event may provide an inCopy right c The Society of Geomagnetism and Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences (SGEPSS); The Seismological Society of Japan; The Volcanological Society of Japan; The Geodetic Society of Japan; The Japanese Society for Planetary Sciences; TERRAPUB.…”

CSEP Testing Center and the first results of the earthquake forecast testing experiment in Japan

“…Japanese research projects aimed of scientific earthquake prediction have primarily focused on a better understanding of the mechanism of earthquake occurrence and the development of predictive simulation technologies based on physical modeling of earthquakes (Hirata, 2004). Less emphasis has been placed on the creation and prospective testing of earthquake forecasting models.…”