Mainshock-strongest aftershock relation in Northeastern Italy and
Western Slovenia
Abstract
In this study, we have applied to northeastern Italy and western
Slovenia medium-low seismicity an algorithm for strong aftershock
forecasting we originally developed for medium-high seismicity in Italy
(Gentili and Di Giovambattista, 2017). This study is possible thanks to
the OGS bulletins, an accurate local catalogue, characterized by low
completeness magnitude, that has been compiled by the National Institute
of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics, Centre of Seismological
Research, since 1977. The method is based on a pattern recognition
approach which uses statistical features based on the number of the
early aftershocks and on the spatio-temporal evolution of the radiated
energy in the first hours/days after the mainshock. The analysis was
performed on different time-spans after the mainshock to simulate the
increase of information available as time passes during the seismic
clusters. Following the approach of Gentili and Giovambattista (2017),
we used an operational definition of clusters that defines “mainshock”
as the first shock of the cluster over a given threshold. We have
adopted this criterion in order to be able to apply the procedure
immediately after the occurrence of a shock without waiting to verify if
a stronger earthquake followed. If the difference in magnitude between
the “mainshock” and the strongest aftershock is lower than 1 the
clusters are classified as “Type A”, otherwise as “Type B”,. The
Type A and B clusters’ distribution is analyzed also considering a draft
subdivision of the region into two sub-regions characterized by
different complexity of the clusters (Peresan and Gentili, 2018) Vp/Vs
(Bressan et al., 2012) and attenuation characteristcs (Gentili and
Gentile, 2015).