An integrated approach for prediction of magnitude using deep learning techniques

Timely estimation of earthquake magnitude plays a crucial role in the early warning systems for earthquakes. Despite the inherent danger associated with earthquake energy, earthquake research necessitates extensive parameter estimation and predictive techniques to account for uncertain trends in earthquake waveforms when determining earthquake magnitudes using a single station. This study introduces an effective solution to tackle the issue through the automatic magnitude deep network (AMagDN) model. The proposed model includes long short-term memory (LSTM), a bidirectional LSTM, an autocorrelation attention mechanism, and a machine learning block that can capture detailed information from the seismic waveform recorded during an earthquake. The unique feature of this model is the use of multivariate time series waveforms derived from recorded accelerograms specifically tailored to their energy significance with magnitude and seven fusion tabular parameters involving source and geospatial features. The proposed model’s training, validation and testing are done using independent 15014, 1287 and 3448 records maintained by the Kyoshin network, Japan, for moderate to great impact earthquakes between 5.5 and 8.0 (MJMA). A comparative study shows that the proposed model outperforms recent state-of-the-art models and common linear relations, reducing mean absolute prediction error by 40% from the second-best model. The multi-stations data are also used for successfully forecasting the magnitudes of two significant earthquakes of 7.7 and 7.3 magnitude (MJMA) using the proposed model. The reliable prediction capabilities of the proposed model for both single and multi-station data clearly demonstrate its utility in reducing earthquake hazards. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2024.