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A standard approach to quantifying the seismic hazard is the relative intensity (RI) method. It is assumed that the rate of seismicity is constant in time and the rate of occurrence of small earthquakes is extrapolated to large earthquakes using Gutenberg-Richter scaling. We introduce nowcasting to extend RI forecasting to time-dependent seismicity, for example, during an aftershock sequence. Nowcasting uses 'natural time'; in seismicity natural time is the event count of small earthquakes. The event count for small earthquakes is extrapolated to larger earthquakes using Gutenberg-Richter scaling. We first review the concepts of natural time and nowcasting and then illustrate seismic nowcasting with three examples. We first consider the aftershock sequence of the 2004 Parkfield earthquake on the San Andreas fault in California. Some earthquakes have higher rates of aftershock activity than other earthquakes of the same magnitude. Our approach allows the determination of the rate in real time during the aftershock sequence. We also consider two examples of induced earthquakes. Large injections of waste water from petroleum extraction have generated high rates of induced seismicity in Oklahoma. The extraction of natural gas from the Groningen gas field in The Netherlands has also generated very damaging earthquakes. In order to reduce the seismic activity, rates of injection and withdrawal have been reduced in these two cases. We show how nowcasting can be used to assess the success of these efforts.This article is part of the theme issue 'Statistical physics of fracture and earthquakes'.

Nowcasting is a new method of statistically classifying seismicity and seismic risk (Rundle et al. 2016). In this paper, the method is applied to the induced seismicity at the Geysers geothermal region in California and the induced seismicity due to fluid injection in Oklahoma. Nowcasting utilizes the catalogs of seismicity in these regions. Two earthquake magnitudes are selected, one large say $$M_{\lambda } \ge 4$$ , and one small say $$M_{\sigma } \ge 2$$ . The method utilizes the number of small earthquakes that occurs between pairs of large earthquakes. The cumulative probability distribution of these values is obtained. The earthquake potential score (EPS) is defined by the number of small earthquakes that has occurred since the last large earthquake, the point where this number falls on the cumulative probability distribution of interevent counts defines the EPS. A major advantage of nowcasting is that it utilizes 'natural time', earthquake counts, between events rather than clock time. Thus, it is not necessary to decluster aftershocks and the results are applicable if the level of induced seismicity varies in time. The application of natural time to the accumulation of the seismic hazard depends on the applicability of Gutenberg-Richter (GR) scaling. The increasing number of small earthquakes that occur after a large earthquake can be scaled to give the risk of a large earthquake occurring. To illustrate our approach, we utilize the number of $$M_{\sigma } \ge 2.75$$ earthquakes in Oklahoma to nowcast the number of $$M_{\lambda } \ge 4.0$$ earthquakes in Oklahoma. The applicability of the scaling is illustrated during the rapid build-up of injection-induced seismicity between 2012 and 2016, and the subsequent reduction in seismicity associated with a reduction in fluid injections. The same method is applied to the geothermal-induced seismicity at the Geysers, California, for comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A standard approach to quantifying the seismic hazard is the relative intensity (RI) method. It is assumed that the rate of seismicity is constant in time and the rate of occurrence of small earthquakes is extrapolated to large earthquakes using Gutenberg-Richter scaling. We introduce nowcasting to extend RI forecasting to time-dependent seismicity, for example, during an aftershock sequence. Nowcasting uses 'natural time'; in seismicity natural time is the event count of small earthquakes. The event count for small earthquakes is extrapolated to larger earthquakes using Gutenberg-Richter scaling. We first review the concepts of natural time and nowcasting and then illustrate seismic nowcasting with three examples. We first consider the aftershock sequence of the 2004 Parkfield earthquake on the San Andreas fault in California. Some earthquakes have higher rates of aftershock activity than other earthquakes of the same magnitude. Our approach allows the determination of the rate in real time during the aftershock sequence. We also consider two examples of induced earthquakes. Large injections of waste water from petroleum extraction have generated high rates of induced seismicity in Oklahoma. The extraction of natural gas from the Groningen gas field in The Netherlands has also generated very damaging earthquakes. In order to reduce the seismic activity, rates of injection and withdrawal have been reduced in these two cases. We show how nowcasting can be used to assess the success of these efforts.This article is part of the theme issue 'Statistical physics of fracture and earthquakes'., (© 2018 The Author(s).)