Recent Developments within the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability

Abstract:

The Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP) supports a global program to conduct prospective earthquake forecast experiments. There are now CSEP testing centers in California, New Zealand, Japan, and Europe, with 430 models under evaluation. In this presentation, we describe how the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) testing center has evolved to meet CSEP objectives and we share our experiences in operating the center. The SCEC testing center has been operational since September 1, 2007, and currently hosts 30-minute, 1-day, 3-month, 1-year and 5-year forecasts, both alarm-based and probabilistic, for California, the Western Pacific, and a global testing region. We have reduced testing latency, implemented prototype evaluation of M8 forecasts and currently develop procedures to evaluate externally-hosted forecasts and predictions. These efforts are related to CSEP support of the USGS program in operational earthquake forecasting and a Department of Homeland Security project to register and test external forecast procedures from experts outside seismology. Retrospective experiment for the 2010 Darfield earthquake sequence formed an important addition to the CSEP activities where the predictive skills of physics-based and statistical forecasting models are compared. We describe the open-source CSEP software that is available to researchers as they develop their forecast models (http://northridge.usc.edu/trac/csep/wiki/MiniCSEP). We also discuss applications of CSEP infrastructure to geodetic transient detection and the evaluation of ShakeAlert system for earthquake early warning (EEW), and how CSEP procedures are being adopted for intensity prediction and ground motion prediction experiments.