FITTING A FRACTAL DISTRIBUTION ON PHILIPPINE SEISMIC DATA: 2011-2013

Abstract

Daily seismic data that occurred in the Philippine area of responsibility from 2011 to April, 2013 were subjected to a fractal analysis. The purpose of the analysis was to fit an appropriate fractal or multifractal distribution on the magnitudes of the observed tremors which can then be used for prediction purposes. Results showed that the mean fractal dimension of the observations was 1.4926. The fractal dimensions computed were observed to obey an exponential distribution with mean λ = 1.4926. The magnitudes of the seismic observations was fitted to a power-law distribution with fractal dimension 1.4926. Further analysis showed that a multi-fractal distribution can also be fitted to the observations using Bayesian techniques. Multi-fractality can be inferred from the presence of at least three distinct fractal dimensions. Prediction tables were constructed for practical guidance. The authors are currently doing a spatio-temporal analysis of the same data set using fractal statistics.