A Markov model for seismic hazard analysis along the Hellenic subduction Zone (Greece)

Abstract

A homogeneous finite–state discrete–time Markov model is applied for the earthquake occurrence in the Hellenic Subduction Zone (Greece), a region accommodating high seismic activity, being a key structure from a seismotectonic point of view. An attempt is made to provide a stochastic representation of the earthquake process and to assess the seismic hazard through the application of the Markov model. The model is applied on a complete data sample comprising strong () eart  h-quakes that occurred in the study area since 1911 up to present. The continuous magnitude scale is divided into appropriate intervals to specify discrete states of the model. As the stochastic behavior of the model is governed by its transition probability matrix, we firstly estimate its well–known maximum likelihood estimator. The estimation of the transition probability matrix leads to the estimation of important indicators of the Markov chain, including hitting times and failure rate functions. The   mean number of steps for the first occurrence of an anticipated earthquake (belonging to the class with the stronger events, which we are more interested in) is estimated along with its variance. In a next step, we calculate the confidence interval of the   aforementioned estimators.