Graphical based monitoring of the Earth's electric field signal prior to the earthquake

Abstract

Earthquake is one of the most destructive natural disasters that kill many people and destroy a lot of properties. Therefore, it is highly important to know well ahead the occurrence of earthquakes in order to reduce the number of victims and material losses. Earthquake prediction is one solution to reduce such disastrous effect. The Earth's electric field signal is one of potential features that can be used for earthquake prediction generated from the released energy through a sudden dislocation of the segment in the earth's crust, this signal has become one of the potential features to predict the earthquake, since it has significant changes in the amplitude of the signal prior to the earthquake. The significant changes of the Earth's electric field signals prior to the earthquake are detected and utilized in this work. This paper presents the development of the Graphical based monitoring system for the earth's electric field. The system uses a graphical user interface (GUI) developed using MATLAB ®. The work is illustrated on earthquake data which occurred in Greece, between January 1, 2008 and June 30, 2008. In that period of time, thirteen earthquakes had occurred. Six of them were recorded with magnitudes greater than Ms=5R (5R), while seven of them were recorded with magnitudes greater than Ms=6R (6R).