A hermeneutic reading of the seismic record: improbable probabilities?

✍ Scribed by David H. Speidel

• Book ID: 103069176
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 182 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0013-7952
• DOI: 10.1016/0013-7952(96)00087-7

✦ Synopsis

That geology is a hermeneutic, or interpretive, science where perception is structured by conception, is welldemonstrated by examination of seismicity. The use of a previously unused tool -probability graph analysis -allows interpretation of the seismic record as composed of a series of sometimes overlapping sets of earthquake magnitudes. These populations can each be described as normally distributed -thus negating the value of the Gutenberg-Richter relationship as a predictive tool. As normal distributions provide a basis for probability analysis in their own right, this conception should still allow probabilistic seismic hazard analysis -assuming of course that the populations defined overlap the magnitudes of interest for hazard analysis.