Remote Sensing Applications in Detecting Electromagnetic Earthquake Precursors
Harb, Mostapha¹; Dell’Acqua, Fabio^2
1University of Pavia, ITALY; ²EUCENTRE, ITALY

This study is intended to highlight an emerging trend in the research field of seismic hazard identification. Among natural disasters, earthquakes have attracted special consideration for their enormous capability to kill, to damage, and to trigger other disasters (tsunami, landslides, technical failures...). Traditionally there has been a focus on quake's rock and soil mechanics to develop a mechanical precursor system for earthquakes. But the instantaneous nature of the hazard so far prevented any breakthrough in the short term prediction of quakes. This fact leads the scientists to rely on the historical data records of certain area to build a seismological probabilistic model. The shortfalls of such approach are widely discussed in the literature, for instance its assumption of the reoccurrence of the historical events with the same frequency. Thus it is widely admitted that our inadequate knowledge regarding a complex physical phenomenon like earthquake is far from allowing us to predict its existence in the short term. Recently there has been a growing trend towards researches discussing the availability of a unified approach towards studying earthquake precursors including the so-called "electromagnetic precursors" as possible clues. The underlying principle is that strain accumulation generates electromagnetic effects through various mechanisms. But, so far, identifying these noisy perturbations and refining them continued to be a lost challenge for scientists due to several complexities including quake nature, measurements sensitivity, and data refinement. These complications always question the reliability all over the prediction process. However, the usage of remote sensing satellites, with the appropriate temporal monitoring, for detecting the infrared thermal anomalies and relating it to quakes has recently reactivated the researches in quakes prediction field [1,2]. Particularly, after the new promising physical explanations offered by the p-hole theory which contributed in adding a new piece to the puzzle for detecting the pre-earthquake electromagnetic precursors[3].

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2. Ma Y. , Wu L., Liu S., Ma B. (2011). A new method to extract and analyse abnormal phenomenon of earthquake from remote sensing information. Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2011 IEEE International, Pages 2208-2211.
3. Freund F. (2003). Rocks That Crackle and Sparkle and Glow: Strange Pre-Earthquake Phenomena. Journal of ScientiZ c Exploration, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 37-71.