Investigating the effects of smoothing on the performance of earthquake hazard maps

We explore whether less detailed probabilistic hazard maps might perform better by assessing how smoothing Japan's national earthquake hazard maps affects their fit to a 510-year record of shaking. As measured by the fractional exceedance metric implicit in such probabilistic hazard maps, simple smoothing over progressively larger areas improves the maps' performance such that in the limit a uniform map performs best. However, using the squared misfit between maximum observed shaking and that predicted as a metric, map performance improves up to a ~75-150 km smoothing window, and then decreases with further smoothing. This result suggests that the probabilistic hazard models and the resulting maps may be over-parameterized, in that including too high a level of detail to describe past and future earthquakes may lower the maps' ability to predict future shaking.

[1]  Edward H. Field,et al.  “All Models Are Wrong, but Some Are Useful” , 2015 .

[2]  Polat Gülkan,et al.  A Dispassionate View of Seismic‐Hazard Assessment , 2013 .

[3]  R. Parker.  Understanding Inverse Theory , 1977 .

[4]  Zhenming Wang,et al.  Predicting or Forecasting Earthquakes and the Resulting Ground‐Motion Hazards: A Dilemma for Earth Scientists , 2015 .

[5]  J. Douglas,et al.  Comment on “Test of Seismic Hazard Map from 500 Years of Recorded Intensity Data in Japan” by Masatoshi Miyazawa and Jim Mori , 2010 .

[6]  S. Stein,et al.  Comparing the Performance of Japan’s Earthquake Hazard Maps to Uniform and Randomized Maps , 2015 .

[7]  Danijel Schorlemmer,et al.  The Statistical Power of Testing Probabilistic Seismic-Hazard Assessments , 2014 .

[8]  S. Stein,et al.  Bayes and BOGSAT: Issues in When and How to Revise Earthquake Hazard Maps (IPR-WP-14-14) , 2014 .

[9]  M. Miyazawa,et al.  Test of Seismic Hazard Map from 500 Years of Recorded Intensity Data in Japan , 2009 .

[10]  Steven N. Ward,et al.  Area-based tests of long-term seismic hazard predictions , 1995 .

[11]  C. L. Casado,et al.  Seismic hazard in Northern Algeria using spatially smoothed seismicity. Results for peak ground acceleration , 2003 .

[12]  Robert Tibshirani,et al.  An Introduction to the Bootstrap , 1994 .

[13]  Robert J. Geller,et al.  Bad Assumptions or Bad Luck: Why Earthquake Hazard Maps Need Objective Testing , 2011 .

[14]  Vladimir Kossobokov,et al.  Errors in expected human losses due to incorrect seismic hazard estimates , 2011, Natural Hazards.

[15]  G. Panza,et al.  Improving earthquake hazard assessments in Italy: An alternative to “Texas sharpshooting” , 2012 .

[16]  Dario Albarello,et al.  Testing probabilistic seismic hazard estimates by comparison with observations: an example in Italy , 2008 .

[17]  Mark D. Petersen,et al.  Seismic hazard estimate from background seismicity in southern California , 1996, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

[18]  Y. Fukushima,et al.  Statistical Comparison of National Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Maps and Frequency of Recorded JMA Seismic Intensities from the K-NET Strong-motion Observation Network in Japan during 1997–2006 , 2009 .

[19]  Robert J. Geller,et al.  Shake-up time for Japanese seismology , 2011, Nature.

[20]  Martin Reyners,et al.  Lessons from the Destructive Mw 6.3 Christchurch, New Zealand, Earthquake , 2011 .

[21]  Robert Tibshirani,et al.  The Elements of Statistical Learning: Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, 2nd Edition , 2001, Springer Series in Statistics.

[22]  Bruce D. Spencer,et al.  Metrics for Assessing Earthquake‐Hazard Map Performance , 2015 .

[23]  Matt Gerstenberger,et al.  Ground Motion–Based Testing of Seismic Hazard Models in New Zealand , 2010 .

[24]  Mark W. Stirling,et al.  Earthquake Hazard Maps and Objective Testing: The Hazard Mapper’s Point of View , 2012 .

[25]  C. Cornell.  Engineering seismic risk analysis , 1968 .

[26]  Mark D. Petersen,et al.  Comparison of the Historical Record of Earthquake Hazard with Seismic- Hazard Models for New Zealand and the Continental United States , 2006 .

[27]  Vladimir Kossobokov,et al.  Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program maps are erroneous , 2012, Seismic Instruments.

[28]  Pierre-Yves Bard,et al.  Can Strong-Motion Observations be Used to Constrain Probabilistic Seismic-Hazard Estimates? , 2008 .

[29]  Romano Camassi,et al.  Catalogo PArametrico dei Terremoti Italiani, versione CPTI11 , 2011 .

[30]  Philippe Guéguen,et al.  Testing probabilistic seismic hazard estimates against accelerometric data in two countries: France and Turkey , 2014 .

[31]  Robert J. Geller,et al.  Why earthquake hazard maps often fail and what to do about it , 2012 .

[32]  G. Box.  Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building. , 1979 .

[33]  A. Peresan,et al.  The comparison of the NDSHA, PSHA seismic hazard maps and real seismicity for the Italian territory , 2013, Natural Hazards.

[34]  Warner Marzocchi,et al.  Testing for ontological errors in probabilistic forecasting models of natural systems , 2014, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[35]  Richard A Kerr,et al.  Seismology. Seismic crystal ball proving mostly cloudy around the world. , 2011, Science.