Test of the EEPAS Forecasting Model on the Japan Earthquake Catalogue

The EEPAS (‘‘Every Earthquake a Precursor According to Scale’’) model is a method of forecasting earthquakes based on the notion that the precursory scale increase (W) phenomenon occurs at all scales in the seismogenic process. The rate density of future earthquake occurrence is computed directly from past earthquakes in the catalogue. The EEPAS model has previously been fitted to the New Zealand earthquake catalogue and successfully tested on the California catalogue. Here we describe a further test of the EEPAS model in the Japan region spanning 1965–2001, initially on earthquakes with magnitudes exceeding the threshold value 6.75. A baseline model and the Gutenberg- Richter b-value were fitted to the JMA catalogue over the learning period 1926–1964. The performance of EEPAS, with the key parameters unchanged from the New Zealand values, was compared with that of the baseline model over the testing period, using a likelihood ratio criterion. The EEPAS model proved superior. A sensitivity analysis shows that this result is not sensitive to the choice of the learning period or b-value, but that the advantage of EEPAS over the baseline model diminishes as the magnitude threshold is lowered. When key model parameters are optimised for the Japan catalogue, the advantage of EEPAS over the baseline model is consistent for all magnitudes above 6.25, although less than in the New Zealand and California regions. These results add strength to the proposition that the EEPAS model is effective at a variety of scales and in a variety of seismically active regions.