PREDICTION POSSIBILITY IN THE FRACTAL OVERLAP MODEL OF EARTHQUAKES

摘要

The two-fractal overlap model of earthquake shows that the contact area distribution of two fractal surfaces follows power law decay in many cases and this agrees with the Guttenberg-Richter power law. Here, we attempt to predict the large events (earthquakes) in this model through the overlap time-series analysis. Taking only the Cantor sets, the overlap sizes (contact areas) are noted when one Cantor set moves over the other with uniform velocity. This gives a time series containing different overlap sizes. Our numerical study here shows that the cumulative overlap size grows almost linearly with time and when the overlap sizes are added up to a pre-assigned large event (earthquake) and then reset to 'zero' level, the corresponding cumulative overlap sizes grows up to some discrete (quantized) levels. This observation should help to predict the possibility of 'large events' in this (overlap) time series.