The short-term seismicity of the Central Ionian Islands (Greece) studied by means of a clustering model

Earthquake clustering in the area of Central Ionian Islands (Greece) is statistically modelled
by means of the Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) branching model, which is
the most popular among the short-term earthquake clustering models. It is based upon the
assumption that an earthquake is not fully related to any other one in particular, but rather
to both all previous events, and the background seismicity. The close temporal proximity of
the strong (M ≥ 6.0) events in the study area offers the opportunity to retrospectively test the
validity of the ETAS model through the 2014 Kefalonia doublet (Mw 6.1 and Mw 6.0) and the
2015 Lefkada aftershock sequences. The application of a physics-based earthquake simulator
to the local fault system produced a simulated catalogue with time, space and magnitude
behaviour in line with the observed seismicity. This catalogue is then used for the detection of
short-term interactions between both strong and smaller events and the comparison between
the two cases. The results show that the suggested clustering model provides reliable forecasts
of the aftershock activity. Combining the ETAS model and the simulator code, though, needs
to be more deeply examined since the preliminary results show some discrepancy between the
estimated model parameters.

This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.