Earthquake forecasting and time-dependent neo-deterministic seismic hazard assessment in Italy and surroundings

An operational procedure for time-dependent seismic hazard assessment has been developed during the last 2 decades, which integrates fully formalized earthquake forecasting information from pattern recognition analysis (by CN and M8S algorithms), with the scenario-based neo-deterministic approach to seismic hazard assessment. The algorithms CN and M8S permit to deal with multiple sets of seismic precursors, and use a detectable inverse cascade of the seismic process to allow for a diagnosis of the intervals of time when a strong event is likely to occur inside a specified region. CN and M8S intermediate-term middle-range forecasts for the Italian territory and its surroundings, as well as the related time-dependent ground motion scenarios associated with the alarmed areas, are regularly updated since 2006. We review the results obtained so far by rigorous prospective testing of the developed procedure, including analysis of the statistical significance of issued forecasts, which supports validation of the applied methodologies.