Magnitude 5.1 Earthquake Los Angeles, March 28, 2014
The earthquake occurred last night at about 9:09:42 pm PDT. Below are some screenshots and simple analysis of future earthquake risk taken from the Hazard Viewer.
The epicenter was closest to the Puente Hills mapped fault:
We can compute the probability of future events in a polygon region by using the viewer and its polygon draw tool:
These probabilities represent the chance of future earthquakes of magnitudes M larger than M>5, M>6, M>7, M>8 within the polygon for a future time interval of 1 month, 1 Year, and 3 Years from today. Probabilities were computed with the Natural Time Weibull method which was published in the journal Physical Review E in 2012 [1]. As result of this event, probabilities for larger earthquakes have increased by several percent from what they had been before.
The boundaries of the polygon are shown below superposed on the mapped faults and today's forecast contours:
[1] http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.86.021106
About OpenHazards Bloggers
Steven Ward is a Research Geophysicist at
the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, UC Santa Cruz. He specializes in the quantification and simulation of
natural hazards. Read Steve's blog.
John Rundle is a Distinguished Professor of Physics
and Geology at UC Davis and
the Executive Director of the APEC Collaboration for Earthquake Simulations. He
chaired the Board of Advisors for the Southern California Earthquake Center from 1994 to 1996. Read John's blog.