Qualitative precursory seismicity pattern in Greece: Practical tool for an impending strong assessment

The temporal variation of the seismicity based on the analysis of three seismic parameters i.e., number of earthquakes, b-value and energy released establish a precursory seismicity pattern. The estimates of the parameters were obtained by the means of a new analysis tool suited to analyze earthquake catalog and to visualize their spatio-temporal variation behavior, in a given area and time period. The obtained temporal variation series in the overwhelming majority of the examined cases have shown significant changes before the strong earthquake occurrence, so that they can be considered as precursory anomalies. The correlation found between these anomalies and strong earthquake shows a remarkable temporal regularity so that this can be formulated as precursory seismicity pattern. This result suggests that the continuous monitoring of the temporal variation of the seismic parameters and the interpretation of the formed temporal pattern, can contribute to the assessment of the impending strong earthquake in a given area.