How artificial intelligence can predict aftershocks

Using artificial intelligence to predict when aftershocks will occur and how strong they will be after an earthquake is a new application that emerges from a Nature article published in September.

Kristina 18 October 2023 3 minute read

Just how many benefits can artificial intelligence actually bring? Amid scepticism and doubts, in some cases there is even the prospect of saving lives. Using artificial intelligence to predict when aftershocks will occur and how strong they will be after an earthquake is a new application, as emerges from an article in ‘Nature’ in September.

This system works on the basis of machine learning: a branch of artificial intelligence that develops models and algorithms not from instructions given by an operator, but from a flood of data coming, for example, from the internet or from databases.

In this case, data on earthquakes are used: their location, magnitude, duration and so on, in short all the characteristics of a tremor and also of the subsequent aftershocks, their number, strength, duration and so on. In this way, with such a vast amount of data at hand, when an earthquake strikes the AI can predict the aftershocks on the basis of a statistical model.

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But let us not get carried away: the system does not predict when and how a tremor will occur. It is not possible to produce “weather forecasts” for earthquakes, at least for now. In this case, however, the AI can predict aftershocks better than current models: a very useful thing since, as we saw with the earthquake in Morocco in September, the consequences of aftershocks can be devastating.

Moreover, with the enormous amount of data at its disposal, the AI can help seismologists understand how and why an earthquake is triggered and what happened before a strong tremor, so that perhaps one day it may be possible to predict the first tremors too.

A great achievement would therefore be to prevent the disastrous consequences and the destruction of cities, which lead to bloody outcomes.

How can this be achieved? For example, in areas such as the Apennine belt and Emilia-Romagna in Italy, which lie right between two plates and are therefore seismic zones, architectural improvements can be planned, such as building earthquake-resistant buildings and renovating existing ones to improve their stability. Educating the population from childhood is also extremely important, with drills at school that teach how to behave during an earthquake (crouching under a table, staying beneath load-bearing walls, not using the stairs or a lift during an earthquake, and so on).

Certainly, for such dramatic and traumatic events one can never feel truly 100% ready. The important thing is to try to do one’s best, saving one’s own life and perhaps the lives of others too.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02934-6

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How artificial intelligence can predict aftershocks

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