MODELING THE SEISMICITY OF CENTRAL IONIAN ISLANDS WITH SEMI-MARKOV MODELS

Earthquakes with M ≥ 5.2 that occurred in the area of central Ionian Islands (1911- 2014) are assumed to form a semi-Markov chain, aiming to contribute in the field of seismic hazard assessment. The sojourn times are considered to be geometric or approximated by Pareto distributions. Destination probabilities are examined and the results demonstrate that in many cases these probabilities become higher adequately forecasting the magnitude class of an anticipated earthquake. The geometrically distributed model can also reveal the more probable occurrence time of the next earthquake since for this model the destination probabilities were found to obtain many times their maximum values for the real occurrence time. The successful forecasting as for the occurrence time is 63.75% for all earthquakes and becomes 71.42% for the larger magnitude events (M ≥ 6.0).