Boffins want machine learning to predict earthquakes

Earthquakes are, by their nature, unpredictable. Although geologists understand why and how the tremors occur, forecasting them more than a few minutes ahead is very difficult. A team of scientists believes that machine learning could help solve this problem one day. A paper published Wednesday in the Geophysical Research …

[John Smith 19]

TBH this sounds like more a candidate for a black board system

BB systems were originally developed to do real time (simulated, as no one had a 10 MIPS processor in 1970) speech recognition in noisy environments (like fighter pilot cockpits). Funded by DARPA.

Like HearSay (the system that resulted) earthquake prediction core task is a RT signal analysis problem which but which has a series of other sensors and "Knowledge Sources" that could be drawn on to decided "Is an earthquake imminent" to "are we seeing the start of a stress build up leading to an earthquake." So it's parts signal processing, part geology, part geophysics etc.

Sadly BB systems are from the "symbolic" side of the signal analysis house and tend to need LISP (or Scheme, or Raquet) skills

[russell 6]

Maybe earthquakes are already predictable!

I came across this channel on YouTube by a guy called Dutch Sinse. Have been watching him for about a month now. He makes almost daily videos tracing tremor and earthquake activity and I have to be honest his forecast rate for where activity will hit hit and how strong it will be is pretty amazing. I'd say he has a 90% accuracy rate, this is what I've seen over the course of the last month. He is an independent researcher, uses public data from seismic monitors around the globe. His forecasts are short term, 3 - 10 days

It is very interesting how he links pressure transference from one part of the globe to another, how deep earthquakes which are not normally felt, lead to nearby stronger shallower earthquakes, the ones that do the damage. Check him out on his channel, he really goes into detail, his vids tend to be about an hour long. https://www.youtube.com/user/dutchsinse

[streaky]

Re: Maybe earthquakes are already predictable!

I'm calling the Nobel Committee right now!

[russell 6]

Re: Maybe earthquakes are already predictable!

I'm just saying that this guy seems to have found a system that works reasonably well at predicting where and when and at what magnitude earthquakes will strike. Have been watching his channel for a while and his system does seem to stack up. Before knocking something you should check it out. That's what I did and it's educational. You might learn something

[Version 1.0]

Re: Maybe earthquakes are already predictable!

Most things - as anyone who works with random number generators etc knows - are predictable given enough of the right kind of data. It's not like most earthquakes are completely unexpected, we just don't generally have enough information to say when.

I'd keep an open mind, but I think we just haven't found the right algorithm for prediction yet ... maybe next year?

[russell 6]

Re: Maybe earthquakes are already predictable!

You are right, there is still much to learn. Watch his latest video and make up your own mind, he does seem to make a lot of sense and he gets the results. https://youtu.be/ynbNng05kJA

[David Roberts]

Existing known faults only?

Two downsides to this report:

(1) It is about monitoring a known fault and learning the sequence up to a quake.

(2) It seems to be easily confused by other near by faults.

In the South Island of NZ the last few big quakes seem to have been along new faults which have not previously been active. There also a huge number of minor faults in very tectonically active areas.

Any progress in prediction of earthquakes is good, but this seems to have a long way to go.

[Version 1.0]

Re: Existing known faults only?

"new faults"? Maybe new to us but they've been there a while, we just haven't been looking at them.

[streaky]

Randomness

They're probably not random but at the same time there probably isn't enough data available to predict them, even roughly. If there was we'd be predicting them already.. There needs to be more data being recorded about stresses in faults at the depths that they occur at, trying to listen for this at 10 miles above probably isn't sensitive enough for most types of quake (plus being sensitive enough for that picks up other fault activity).

I did see that one guy in /r/conspiracy that reckons they're easy to predict via solar flare activity that gave me a chuckle though..

[Korev]

Re: Randomness

They're probably not random but at the same time there probably isn't enough data available to predict them, even roughly.

I guess that accurate seismology measurement has only been available for a few decades and big quakes are (thankfully) rare; in time there will be a better dataset to learn on.

[streaky]

Re: Randomness

It's not just about accurate equipment, it's about putting the sensors down where energy will be released from. If you can detect the early signs then yes, sure, it should be possible to predict earthquakes.

It's not always that simple though, just looking at the signs we'd be expecting the Yellowstone supervolcano to blow 100 times over the last 30 years.

[John Smith 19]

"probably not random but...probably isn't enough data available to predict them,"

I'm inclined to think about climate modelling, where a single "voxel" is roughly 10Km x 10Km x 1Km high, so most models don't even accept that in fact the Earth is an oblate spheroid, so the maths is going to get difficult when the top edges of the squares around the Poles become infinitely short. Nothing a fudge factor or three cannot fix, but not actually according to physical reality.

With earthquakes I think things are equally tricky. How fast can a fault form? What's the smallest that can cause trouble? How deep?

I suspect there may be a lot happening that's important to better predictions that's below the "resolution limit" of current models for this.

[Nick Kew]

What you describe looks like a classic case of prejudice.

The simulation is obviously of limited value, though it demonstrates a system working in principle. And you describe the work with real data as including pre-filtering to identify the signal from the noise. An application of precisely the kind of prejudice you describe. Except, here it's objective.

[Tom 7]

Best of luck to em

but this is going to be no great shakes.

[Flakk]

It's Nice to Want Stuff

Boffins want machine learning to predict earthquakes

I want machine learning to predict when Gabe Newell is going to get off of his derriere and make "Half-Life 3". I'd say it's a toss-up as to which ML project would be the more realistic and/or likely to succeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Great Karnak

Hell, I can reliably predict earthquakes. In fact, I predict one within the next week.

[Alan Brown]

Some limited use

Whilst it may not be accurate for long periods, being able to accurately say a quake is about to happen "NOW" gives critical infrastructure such as rail time to stop and elevators to halt with their doors open.

[TheElder]

Nonsense

Earthquakes fall into Chaos Theory, same as the weather. I ran my own world wide sensitive seismograph for many years and was a part of the B.C. seismography system. I could detect anything from ocean waves hitting cliffs during storms 400 klicks away to earthquakes in Greece.

Like the weather the closer in time to the event the more accurate the prediction. That is a matter of weeks at the best unless it is something like a volcano or an atomic weapon that you know is going to blow soon as well as mine blasting. In the case of the weather if one says it will be similar tomorrow as it is today one will be correct about 70% of the time.

Here on the west coast of Canada we are waiting for the BIG one. Based on previous records it is a bit overdue. The chance is stated as percentage probability of it happening sooner or later. There are some interesting correlations though. There is a higher chance of a swarm of small quakes every spring in this general area.

Being in a big one is very interesting. Many years ago I was in San Francisco staring at the remains of King Tut when a shallow 6.2 hit. The quake resistant museum building began sliding on its foundation about six inches, back and forth. It wasn't easy to stand. Hundreds of alarms began sounding. The security people were totally confused about what to do. One person ordered everyone to stand against the walls. Stupid. The walls were filled with artifact displays. If I was a criminal I could have stolen just about anything in the first minute or so. Lie down or on your knees would have been appropriate.

Another time when I was quite young a bigger one hit. I ran outside and could actually see waves passing across a large open field of short grass. It was like standing in a small boat in the ocean. I have been in about five earthquakes that caused some damage. Then there was Mount. St. Helens. I wasn't near it but it was a close call for the ash storm.

[Calimero]

Yawn

Is there something Deep Learning cannot predict/assess/solve?

Here is the one we will all love: deep learning will creat deep learning.