Investigation of seismicity for the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) and its surrounding by using different statistical methods

The earthquakes in Turkey should be investigated by reason of take places in the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt and involves the active North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ). By the light of these examinations necessary precautions should be taken against earthquakes, appropriate structures should be designed, safe living zone should be determined and the earthquake disaster management plans should be established. The statistical methods take importance place for investigation of the seismicity studies. A large portion of Turkey's residential and industrial areas have high earthquake risk. Therefore, detailed statistical researches were considered to be done. For this reason, earthquake probabilities were calculated with 4 statistical models (Poisson, Markov, Weibull and Exponential Distribution) in 3 main regions, respectively in the present study. The consistency and differences on results of analysis were examined by compared each other. When the earthquake prediction studies were analyzed, it was found that three forecast models (Poisson, Markov, Weibull) were more useful for long time interval. As a result of these studies, it was found that an earthquake occurrence probability with Ms ≥ 5.0 is highest in all models and in all regions. On the other hand, the highest occurrence probability of an earthquake in the interval of 5.5 ≤M <6.0 in the next 2 years was calculated with Markov model for Region 2.