TITLE:
Seismic Sequences’ Branching Structures: Long-Range Interactions and Hazard Levels
AUTHORS:
Giulio Riga, Paolo Balocchi
KEYWORDS:
Branching Structure, Earthquake, Microsequence, Hierarchization, Foreshock, Hazard
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Earthquake Research,
Vol.5 No.4,
October
19,
2016
ABSTRACT: Branching structures can provide early information on earthquakes’ preparation
process, trigger stage, different breaking patterns that can occur before strong earthquakes
and hazard levels reached in the area to be analyzed. In this study, we aim to
understand the earthquakes long-range interactions which constitute the nodes of
higher order seismic rods in the upper branching structure, and the hazard level
reached in each developmental stage as well as to provide a warning time frame for
the most energetic seismic events and a sound method to obtain information on the
epicentral area. To this end, we have analyzed several branching structures by using
both local and global seismicity. The analysis of different branching structures both
on global and local scale highlights long-range interactions between the most energetic
earthquakes and their triggering by smaller shocks, thus suggesting that the
triggering can occur few minutes to decades before the earthquake, depending on a
seismic sequence’s development speed and its structure.