Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system to successfully predict earthquakes, an advance that may help prepare for natural disasters and potentially save lives. The study, published in the journal Geophysical Review Letters, identified a hidden signal leading up to earthquakes, and used this 'fingerprint' to train a machine learning algorithm to predict future earthquakes. Researchers from University of Cambridge in the UK and Boston University in the US studied the interactions among earthquakes, precursor quakes and faults, with the hope of developing a method to predict earthquakes. Using a lab-based system that mimics real earthquakes, they used machine learning techniques to analyse the acoustic signals coming from the 'fault' as it moved and search for patterns. Machine learning enables the analysis of datasets too large to handle manually and looks at data in an unbiased way that enables discoveries to be made, researchers said.

Source: dna October 23, 2017 08:26 UTC