The K Method for Estimating Earthquake Activity Parameters and Effect of the Boundary Uncertainty of the Source Region:Discussion on the Seismic Zoning Method

Two aspects of a new method,which can be used for seismic zoning,are introduced in this paper.On the one hand,the approach to estimate b value and annual activity rate proposed by Kijko and Sellevoll needs to use the earthquake catalogue.The existing earthquake catalogue contains both historical and recent instrumental data sets and it is inadequate to use only one part.Combining the large number of historical events with recent complete records and taking the magnitude uncertainty into account,Kijko's method gives the maximum likelihood estimation of b value and annual activity rate,which might be more realistic.On the other hand,this method considers the source zone boundary uncertainty in seismic hazard analysis,which means the earthquake activity rate across a boundary of a source zone changes smoothly instead of abruptly and avoids too large a gradient in the calculated results.