有關地震預測的一篇論文 - 地球科學討論

我對地震學的了解僅限於大學程度，期待其他有興趣的板友加入提供看法。

EARTHQUAKE PREDICTION:
State-of-the-Art and Emerging Possibilities

發表在Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2002. 30:1–33

作者是Vladimir Keilis-Borok

裡面許多資料來自於International Institute of Earthquake
Prediction Theoryand Mathematical Geophysics, Moscow.

我節錄引言部分，歡迎有興趣的其他版友索取電子檔。裡面的英文還蠻簡單的，
但還是希望能陸續翻成中文讓更多人能了解並討論。

1. Earthquake prediction is pivotal both for reduction of the
damage from earthquakes and for fundamental understanding of
lithosphere dynamics. That twofold goal, usual for prediction
research, brings up the key questions considered here:

(a) What predictions are already possible?
(b) How can damage from earthquakes be reduced on the basis of
such predictions, given their limited accuracy?
(c) What fundamental knowledge has been gained in earthquake
prediction research? Thecommon underlying question is, what comes next?

2. This problem is of urgent practical importance because earthquakes
pose a rapidly growing threat to survival and sustainable development
of our civilization. This is due to the well-known interrelated
developments: proliferation of radioactive waste disposals, high dams,
nuclear power plants, lifelines, and other objects whose damage poses
an unacceptable risk; self-destruction of megacities; destabilization
of the environment; and growing socio-economic volatility of the global
village. For all of these reasons, seismic risk has escalated also in
numerous regions of low seismicity. Today, a single earthquake may take
up to a million lives, cause material damage up to $1.0E+12, raze a
megacity, trigger a global economic depression, render a large territory
uninhabitable, and destabilize the military balance in a region.

Earthquake prediction is necessary to undertake disaster preparedness
measures, reducing the damage from the earthquakes. This requires that
the accuracy of prediction be known, but, contrary to common belief, a
timely prediction of low accuracy may be very useful.

3. Earthquake prediction is necessary also for fundamental understanding
of the dynamics of the lithosphere, particularly in the timescales of
100 years and less. So far, this problem is in the same stage as the
theory of gravity was between T. Brahe and J. Kepler: the study of
heuristic regularities (啟發原則) that are necessary to develop a
fundamental theory.

4. Here we review the research that extends to formally defined prediction
algorithms and to their tests by advance prediction. Being a part of much
broader efforts in earthquake prediction, this is presently most essential
both for damage reduction and for understanding the lithosphere.
Methodologically, this research integrates theoretical modeling and analysis
of observations.

5. Why was this topic suggested for the prefatory chapter of the Annual
Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences? First, as the reader will see,
the earthquake prediction problem is connected, one way or another, with
most of the solid Earth sciences, tying together an immense variety of
fields and processes in the wide range of time- and space scales.
Algorithmic prediction, if successful, provides one of the major hopes
for bringing internal order in that diversity of topics and methods. Indeed,
since the times of Galileo, if not through the whole history of science,
prediction has been a major tool of fundamental research, a source of
heuristic constraints and hypotheses, and the final test of theories.

Second, the earthquake prediction problem happens to be closely relevant
to what I believe is a current frontier of the solid Earth sciences:
emergence of a fundamental concept that would succeed plate tectonics,
provide a fundamental base for prediction and (with luck) control of
geological and geotechnical disasters, and establish links with“universal"
scenarios of critical transitions in nonlinear (complex) systems.

6. The earthquake prediction realm still exhibits a striking gap in mutual
awareness. This gap is amazingly large even for such a huge conglomerate
of problems and professions; for earthquake preparedness it bodes ill—
the chance to undertake preparedness measures should not be missed.

7. This gap might be partly due to the lack of a common language. To reach
a possibly wider audience, I wrote this review in qualitative terms
(retaining, I hope, a reasonable precision), although the studies considered
here are entirely quantitative, with a substantial (to put it gently)
mathematical component.

8. The following topics are covered by this review.

(a) Structure of the earthquake-prone fault network: hierarchy of blocks and
faults, and nucleation of earthquakes in mosaic nodes at the faults'
intersections and junctions.

(b) Fault networks as a stockpile of instability: a multitude of mechanisms
that destabilize the strength stress field and turn the network into a
complex system with earthquakes for critical phenomena and the predictability
of that system.

(c) Prediction algorithms: premonitory seismicity patterns and the
performance of the algorithms in advance prediction worldwide.

(d) Error diagrams—a tool for validation of prediction methods.

(e) Four paradigms in earthquake prediction: basic types of precursors,
long-range correlations in the fault network, partial similarity of
precursors worldwide, and their dual origin—some precursors are common for
many complex systems, others are Earth-specific.

(f) Earthquake prediction and earthquake preparedness.

(g) Emerging possibilities, yet unexplored.

9. This paper is a preview to the monographic treatise on earthquake
prediction, now in preparation, by a team from the International Institute
of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, Russian Academy
of Sciences. Most of the specific findings discussed here were obtained in
that Institute as well as in the following institutions: in France, the
Institute of the Physics of the Earth (Paris) and Observatory of Nice; in
the United States, Cornell and Purdue Universities, University of California,
Los Angeles, University of Southern California, Massachussetts Institute of
Technology, and U.S. Geological Survey; in Italy, the Abdus Salam
International Center for Theoretical Physics, Universities of Rome
(“La Sapienza”) and Trieste.

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