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°E-42°E, 108°N-125°N) and the capital region (38°E-41.5°E, 114°N-120°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.