Citation

Papadopoulos GA. Nat. Hazards 1993; 7(2): 99-108.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/BF00680424

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Decision on whether or not a specific stochastic model is an adequate description of the earthquake time series depends on (a) the characteristics of the earthquake sample (total time interval, magnitude range, inclusion or not of dependent events) and (b) the selection of counting interval,τ, which seems to be of crucial importance. Certain improvements are proposed for handling earthquake samples when tested against stochastic models. Particularly, it is proposed thatτ should be nonarbitrarily selected as equal to the mean return period of events of magnitude equal to or larger than the lower magnitude,M min, for which the data are complete. A methodological experiment has been performed using three data sets of South Aegean intermediate depth main shocks of variableM min. It is clear that the distribution gradually approaches the simple Poisson model as the counting interval decreasingly approaches a nonarbitrarily selected value, which indicates the important misleading effect of using arbitrarily selected counting intervals. The efficiency of the proposed improvements in stochastic modelling of volcanic eruption and tsunami time series is discussed.

Language: en