Editorial: Achievements and New Frontiers in Research Oriented to Earthquake Forecasting

Abstract

Forecasting earthquakes is a challenging scientific task, due to the intrinsic complexity of the problem, as well as to the limited size and different accuracy of available observations. During the last decades increasing efforts have been devoted by geophysical research in an attempt to answer the following fundamental questions: 1) Which are the physical processes that take place in the Earth crust that are relevant for an earthquake to nucleate? 2) How can we observe, describe and model them statistically and physically? Although a clear univocal picture is still missing, a large amount of data and long-term observations accumulated over the time, as well as new methodological approaches, which eventually allow for development and verification of theoretical models. Observations and physical models suggest that several processes in the Earth’s lithosphere are predictable, but after substantial averaging and up to a limit. Accordingly, earthquake forecasting requires a holistic approach, and should be posed as an integrated, multi-scale process, narrowing down the magnitude range, territory, and time of expectation, all within the limits imposed by physics and data uncertainties. The understanding of governing laws, from long-term tectonic loading and slow nucleation to rapid rupture propagation, may contribute to estimate the stress state and temporal evolution of geophysical observables around seismically active areas.