SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF EARTHQUAKES IN IRAQ USING STATISTICAL AND DATA MINING TECHNIQUES

Abstract

Statistical and data mining techniques (DMTs) are applied to an earthquakes catalogue of Iraq to study the spatial distribution pattern of earthquakes over the period from 1900 to 2010. The employed techniques are Quadrant Account Analysis (QCA), Tree-clustering, k-means Clustering, Association rules, and Linear Regression. Results of QCA showed that the pattern of earthquake occurrence beneath Iraq was spatially clustered. According to results of application of tree-clustering, earthquakes were grouped into nine clusters depending on degree of similarity between events. Results K-means clustering confirmed results of tree-clustering. Application of association rules failed to generate association rules between the earthquakes parameters (location, depth and magnitude, ...etc.). A weak relationship between depth and magnitude was the result of application of linear regression.