Wed. May 25, 2016 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM 106 (1F)

Convener:*Hiroshi Tsuruoka(Earthquake Research Institute, Tokyo Univ.), Naoshi Hirata(Earthquake Research Institute, the University of Tokyo), Danijel Schorlemmer(GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences), Matt Gerstenberger(GNS Science), Chair:Danijel Schorlemmer(GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences), Dahmen A Karin(Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign)

Earthquake statistics, providing major contributions to earthquake forecast and hazard models, is moving towards combinations with physics-based models. Coulomb-based and rate and state-based models attempt to better describe stress and activity evolution for better forecasting seismicity rates. Global strain rates are combined with activity rates to improve long term forecasts.

Simultaneously, hazard models are nowadays incorporating more earthquake statistics than simple smoothed seismicity models for background seismicity. They are becoming increasingly time-dependent on various time scales beyond the established ETAS model. Statistics are included to describe temporal as well as spatial earthquake activity.

These developments are creating new challenges for model testing as more time scales and more complex models need to be implemented in the testing centers of the Collaboratory for Study of Earthquake Predictability. These testing centers (in California, Japan, New Zealand, and Europe) operate forecasting experiments in various regions of the world with more than 400 models under continuous testing.

We invite contributions about new statistical observations of earthquake occurrence, new earthquake forecast models (statistical or physics-based or combinations thereof), new ideas about how earthquake statistics can be used to improve seismic hazard assessment, and, last but not least, new or improved earthquake forecast testing metrics and procedures.