One of the most pressing questions in earthquake physics is understanding where and when earthquakes occur and how seismicity is related to stress changes in the Earth's crust. This question is even more important today because humans are increasingly influencing stresses in the bedrock by using the subsurface.
So far, two classes of physically based seismicity models have been mainly used. One assumes that an earthquake occurs immediately when the stress exceeds a threshold, and the other is based on the initiation of earthquakes according to friction laws determined in the laboratory. Both models are very different in their approaches, have advantages and disadvantages, and are limited in their applicability. In this paper we present a new concept for seismicity models based only on a relation between the mean time to earthquake and the stress state. The new concept is very simple and short to derive and surprisingly combines the strengths of both previous models, as shown in several applications to anthropogenically induced seismicity. Both traditional models turn out to be special cases of the new model.
Dahm, T., Hainzl, S. (2022): A Coulomb Stress Response Model for Time‐Dependent Earthquake Forecasts. - Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 127, 9, e2022JB024443, 10.1029/2022JB024443
Dahm, T., Hainzl, S., Dahm, R. A.(2022): Time-dependent stress response seismicity models (TDSR), Potsdam. GFZ Data Services, doi.org/10.5880/GFZ.2.1.2022.002