Temporal variation of predictability in a hierarchical model of dynamical self-organized criticality

A hierarchical model reproducing the dynamical self-organized criticality, previously described in Planter et al. [Blanter, E.M., Shnirman, M.G., Le M ouel, J.-L., 1988. Hierarchical model of seismicity-scaling and predictabil ity. Phys. Earth Planet. Inter. 103 (1998), 135-150] is considered. We inve stigate the predictability of strong events in a synthetic earthquake seque nce generated by this model. We apply a simple prediction algorithm based o n variations of the average magnitude in a sliding time window. Though para meters of the model are fixed, the quality of prediction and the optimal th reshold of alarm declaration have strong temporal variations. We show that temporal variation of the prediction's quality is larger when the energy ra te is lower. Possible applications for real seismicity are briefly discusse d. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.