Application of mechanical and statistical models to the study of seismicity of synthetic earthquakes and the prediction of natural ones

Based on a cellular automata model, which obeys rules produced by a spring-damper-slider model of fault network, a synthetic earthquake catalog of deterministic chaos can be produced. It is a challenge to inverse the model parameters and predict the synthetic earthquakes from the synthetic catalog. We apply an improved statistical model of coupled stress release to the synthetic catalog, it does successfully inverse the stress evolution of the system, but effectively prediction of the earthquakes from the stresses remains a problem. This research is partially supported by the Chinese Joint Seismological Science Foundation and Asian 2000 Foundation of New Zealand.