DEFORMATION FIELD OF SURFACE ROCKS AS AN EFFECTIVE INDICATOR OF OPERATIONAL EARTHQUAKE PREDICTION

Abstract

Based on the monitoring of the deformation field in surface rocks we have developed a technology of operational earthquake prediction with the detection of the time of the event 16±10 hours before it, in the presence of a network of observation points and an area of its epicenter position. The effectiveness of the technology is shown by several examples of earthquake prediction up to 16 hours before the events at distances from the epicenters from 2,500 km to 10,000 km. It is established that the probability of an earthquake by the hours of the day is not the same. It is noticeably higher for a time period about 0 h UT (midnight).
The importance of solving the problem of operational earthquake prediction is ascertained by the large number of victims in heavy events. For example, about 300,000 people died in Indonesia in December 2004. Numerous attempts to develop an operational prediction have been so far inconclusive and have make many seismologists believe that an operational prediction is impossible due to the randomness of the earthquake phenomeno.