Prediction of Time Histories of Seismic Ground Motion using Genetic Programming

We have been developing a method to build models for time series using Genetic Programming. The proposed method has been applied to various kinds of time series e.g. computer-generated chaos, natural phenomena, and financial market indices etc. Now we apply the prediction method to time histories of seismic ground motion i.e. one-step-ahead prediction of seismographic amplitude. Waves of earthquakes are composed of P-waves and S-waves. They propagate in different speeds and have different characteristics. It is believed that P-waves arrive firstly and S-waves arrive secondly. Simulations were performed based on real data of Hyuganada earthquake which broke out at southern part of Kyushuu Island in Japan. To our surprise, prediction model built using the earthquake waves in early time can enough precisely predict main huge waves in later time. Lots of experiments lead us to conclude that every slice of data involves P-wave and S-wave. The simulation results suggest the GP-based prediction method can be utilized in alarm systems or dispatch systems in an emergency.