Cannot earthquakes be predicted?: response to comment on Geller and others, 1997 by Aceves and Park, 1997 and Wyss, 1997

Geller, Robert; Jackson, David; Kagan, Yan; Mulargia, Francesco

Response: 'Earthquake science can achieve significant improvements in fundamental understanding of tectonics, material behavior, stress interactions, and related physical processes. It can also deliver improved seismic hazard estimation and risk reduction. However, as we pointed out in our Perspective (1), earthquake prediction would have to be reliable (producing few false alarms and few failures to predict) and accurate (with small ranges of uncertainty in space, time, and magnitude) to justify the cost of responses such as declaring a state of emergency or ordering evacuations. As decades of intensive research have not yielded positive results (2, 3), hopes for such reliable and accurate prediction appear to be unrealistic. . . . . 'Emergency measures in response to predictions, as defined above, would be highly costly and would greatly disrupt society. Such measures could only be taken on the basis of a glaringly obvious precursor that almost invariably preceded large earthquakes and almost never occurred otherwise (37). Furthermore there would have to be a reliable quantitative relation between the precursor and the parameters of the impending earthquake. As the past decades of prediction research have not found any such clear and highly reliable precursory signal (2, 3), it seems likely that none exists. We therefore think that emphasis should be placed on basic research in earthquake science, real-time seismic warning systems, and long-term probabilistic earthquake hazard studies.'

Cannot earthquakes be predicted?: response to comment on Geller and others, 1997 by Aceves and Park, 1997 and Wyss, 1997

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