"Seismic-mass" density-based algorithm for spatio-temporal clustering

In this research work a new hybrid approach to spatio-temporal seismic clustering is proposed. The method builds upon a novel density based clustering scheme that explicitly takes into account earthquake's magnitude during the density estimation. The new density based clustering algorithm considers both time and spatial information during cluster formation. Therefore clusters lie in a spatio-temporal space. A hierarchical agglomerative clustering algorithm acts upon the identified clusters after dropping the time information in order to come up only with the spatial description of seismic events. The approach is demonstrated using data from the vicinity of the Hellenic seismic arc in order to enable its comparison with some of the state-of-the-art distinct seismic region identification methodologies. The presented results indicate that the combination of the two clustering stages could be potentially used for an automatic definition of major seismic sources. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.