Probabilistic prediction of rupture length, slip and seismic ground motions for an ongoing rupture: implications for early warning for large earthquakes
Earthquake EarlyWarning (EEW) predicts future ground shaking based on presently available
data. Long ruptures present the best opportunities for EEW since many heavily shaken areas
are distant from the earthquake epicentre and may receive long warning times. Predicting
the shaking from large earthquakes, however, requires some estimate of the likelihood of the
future evolution of an ongoing rupture. An EEW system that anticipates future rupture using
the present magnitude (or rupture length) together with the Gutenberg-Richter frequencysize
statistics will likely never predict a large earthquake, because of the rare occurrence of
‘extreme events’. However, it seems reasonable to assume that large slip amplitudes increase
the probability for evolving into a large earthquake. To investigate the relationship between the
slip and the eventual size of an ongoing rupture, we simulate suites of 1-D rupture series from
stochastic models of spatially heterogeneous slip. We find that while large slip amplitudes
increase the probability for the continuation of a rupture and the possible evolution into a
‘Big One’, the recognition that rupture is occurring on a spatially smooth fault has an even
stronger effect.We conclude that anEEWsystem for large earthquakes needs some mechanism
for the rapid recognition of the causative fault (e.g., from real-time GPS measurements) and
consideration of its ‘smoothness’. An EEW system for large earthquakes on smooth faults,
such as the San Andreas Fault, could be implemented in two ways: the system could issue
a warning, whenever slip on the fault exceeds a few metres, because the probability for a
large earthquake is high and strong shaking is expected to occur in large areas around the
fault. A more sophisticated EEW system could use the present slip on the fault to estimate the
future slip evolution and final rupture dimensions, and (using this information) could provide
probabilistic predictions of seismic ground motions along the evolving rupture. The decision
on whether an EEW system should be realized in the first or in the second way (or in a
combination of both) is user-specific
