Real-time monitoring of earthquake nucleation for faults near urban areas

A longstanding, lingering question in geoscience is whether earthquakes show a precursory nucleation process. Precursory signals from well-recorded large earthquakes displayed widely different amplitude or duration, and some large earthquakes displayed no detectable precursors. The main objectives of QUAKE-HUNTER are (1) to determine the most effective approaches to detect fault-related transients preceding moderate to large earthquakes, and (2) to monitor seismic and aseismic processes and infer from them the fault conditions under which earthquake nucleation processes emerge, and the optimal instrumentation required to capture them. To achieve these, we will develop different methodologies based on a combination of supervised and unsupervised artificial intelligence to identify retrospectively earthquake nucleation processes for active faults near earthquake-threatened urban areas. The ultimate goal will be to test the performance of this novel earthquake forecasting methodology in near-real time. We will analyze data from north-western Turkey, where the North Anatolian Fault is overdue for a magnitude M>7 earthquake directly adjacent to the Istanbul megalopolis with its >15M inhabitants. The groundbreaking part of QUAKE-HUNTER is that if earthquake nucleation processes could be discerned prior to large earthquakes in the Marmara region, then automated near-real-time detection could provide extended warning and preparation time. If successful, this could become in the future an essential ingredient for activating civil protection protocols to mitigate seismic risk. QUAKE-HUNTER aims at having a strong scientific impact on earthquake physics: we will be able to refine our knowledge on the physics of earthquakes shortly before their start, as well as the fault conditions favoring the identification of earthquake precursors. The first-time testing of such methodology in real-time will have a strong societal impact, potentially advancing earthquakes forecasting.