Patterns of synthetic seismicity and recurrence times in a spring-block earthquake model

In this paper, we investigated the spring-block model proposed by Olami, Feder and Christensen (OFC) [15], to find properties of real seismicity, following the same procedure that Brown, Scholz and Rundle (BSR) [19]. We find that the results of the OFC model can reproduce the real seismicity staircase graphics and produce seismicity patterns similar to real patterns. We discuss the advantages of synthetic seismicity catalogues and about the possibility of recognizing seismic precursory quiescence in these catalogues. We find that the distribution of large earthquake recurrence times in the OFC model is log-normal for the elastic parameters values used in that model.