Application of support vector machine to synthetic earthquake prediction

This paper introduces the method of support vector machine (SVM) into the field of synthetic earthquake prediction, which is a non-linear and complex seismogenic system. As an example, we apply this method to predict the largest annual magnitude for the North China area (30 degrees E-42 degrees E, 108 degrees N-125 degrees N) and the capital region (38 degrees E-41.5 degrees E, 114 degrees N-120 degrees N) on the basis of seismicity parameters and observed precursory data. The corresponding prediction rates for the North China area and the capital region are 64.1% and 75%, respectively, which shows that the method is feasible.