EARTHQUAKE FORECASTING IN BANGLADESH AND ITS SURROUNDING REGIONS

Abstract

Earthquake is one of the most dreadful natural disasters which have caused incalculable destruction of properties and human lives. An examination of the historical catalog of Bangladesh and its surrounding regions reveal that several earthquakes of large magnitude with epicenters within this region have occurred in the past. In this paper, we have analyzed the previous earthquake data up to 2008 of Bangladesh and its adjacent regions with spatial distribution and have tried to find out the probable earthquake risk with magnitude ( ms ≥ 6.0) in this region. Our goal is to forecast waiting times until the next earthquake in Bangladesh and its surrounding regions for a magnitude of earthquake ( ms ≥ 6.0). For the prediction of the next strong earthquake, we have used Weibull distribution which is the best way to carry out probabilistic hazard analysis of earthquake occurrences and compared this distribution with the log-normal distribution and exponential distribution for the occurrence of earthquake in Bangladesh and its surrounding regions.