Recurrent Convolutional Neural Networks Help to Predict Location of Earthquakes

We develop a neural network (NN) architecture aimed at the midterm prediction of earthquakes. Our data-based model aims to predict if an earthquake with a magnitude above a threshold takes place at a given small area of size 10 km x 10 km in a midterm range of 10-50 days from a given moment. Our deep NN model has a recurrent part long short term memory (LSTM) that accounts for time dependencies between earthquakes and a convolutional part that accounts for spatial dependencies. Obtained results show that NNs-based models beat baseline feature-based models that also account for spatio-temporal dependencies between different earthquakes. Moreover, each part of our network is essential for its quality. For historical data on Japan earthquakes, our model predicts the occurrence of an earthquake in a period of 10 to 50 days from a given moment with magnitude $M_c > 5$ missing 2.09 center dot 10(3) earthquakes out of 3.11 center dot 10(3) and making 192 center dot 10(3) false alarms. The baseline approach misses 2.07 center dot 10(3) earthquakes but with a significantly higher number of false alarms 1004 center dot 10(3).

Automated summary

This study developed a neural network architecture for midterm earthquake prediction. The deep learning model predicts earthquakes in a specific small area by considering both temporal and spatial dependencies.