Probabilistic prediction of the next large earthquake in the Zagros Folded-Thrust Belt
by
Shaghayegh Kordnoori
ISLAMIC AZA UNIVERSITY NORTH TEHRAN BRANCH
Coauthors: Hamidreza Mostafaei DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS , ISLAMIC AZAD UNIVERSITY NORTH TEHRAN BRANCH

Probabilistic methods are helpful for characterizing earthquake prediction. The seismic process can be modeled as a renewal process using a list of strong earthquakes (M 6.5) from 1900 until now which occurred in the Zagros fold -thrust belt. Two renewal models have been used. The model parameters have been specified by the method of moments and the method of maximum likelihood . We conclude that the gamma model gives the better result than the lognormal model. The probability of the occurrence of the next large earthquake during a specified interval of time can be calculated for each model. Also by maximizing the conditional probability for each model, we estimated approximately the recurrence time of the next strong earthquake in this region.

Date received: January 10, 2010