Evaluation of Proposed Earthquake Precursors

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the "Special Publications Series."Purpose.

The Preliminary List of Significant Earthquake Precursors (the List) is intended to serve as a preliminary assessment of the state of the art in the identification of earthquake precursors which may be useful in earthquake prediction attempts.

It will be updated periodically during the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR).Placing a precursor, a method, or a case history on this List does not guarantee that the reported anomaly was actually a genuine precursor, that the method works in general or that the case history is without shortcoming.

A method is included on the List if the majority of the reviewers and panelists thought it more likely than not that the method may be useful for earthquake prediction.

An individual case history is put on the List if the majority thought that it was more likely than not that the claimed anomaly was real and physically related to the mainshock.

Similarly, the decision by the panel not to place an item on this list does not necessarily mean that it concludes that there is no value in that line of research.

It only means that the majority of the reviewers and panelists thought that the work or the documentation was incomplete or had shortcomings to a degree that makes it more likely than not that the technique in its current state of development is not yet established as useful for earthquake prediction.

Also we do not know at present to what extent precursors may be different in different tectonic settings.

A method that appears promising or useless in one environment may not be so in another.