Japan Quake Map 2010-2011

1 Introduction

“The 3.11 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan”, It did serious damage to Japan. I have attempted gaining deeper a understanding of seismic activity after showing “Japan Quake Map” on R-bloggeres. This posting is a summary about earthquakes in Japan on 2011.

2 Japan Quake Map

The movie of “Japan Quake Map 2010-2011″ was updated on Youtube. Sampling period is from Jan 1, 2010 through Dec 31, 2011. Data source is website of Japan Weather Association.

3 Histogram

The following is a daily histogram about earthquakes in Japan from Jan 1, 2010 through Dec 31, 2011.

4 Scattergram

The following is three-year scattergram animation about earthquake in the year 2009, 2010 and 2011. The animation was created with R, ggplot2 and ImageMagick. Click on image for full size image.

5 Gutenberg-Richter law

The following is a Magnitude-Frequency distribution about earthquakes in Japan from January 1885 through December 2011. Number of samples is 42870. This dataset is included only data bigger than Magnitude 4.0.

6 Predict

After “The 3.11 Tohoku Earthquake”, Seismological Society of Japan admitted defeat because they couldn’t predict it and prevent serious damage.
On the other hand, A professor at University of Tokyo announced that they have estimated a 70 percent chance of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake occurring directly beneath Japan’s capital city of Tokyo within 4 Years.(souce : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE)
But many people are skeptical about that. Anyway, I hope that valuable prediction models will be developed as soon as possible.

7 Gratitude

I’d like to introduce two website below, if you kindly wish to send your donations.
First is Japanese Red Cross Society.
Second is Google Crisis Response.
I’d like to express our thanks to all of you for helping us.