Modelling Earthquakes: Characterizing Magnitudes and Inter-Arrival Times

Statistical modelling of earthquakes is a challenging and delicate topic: research activity is vivid in this respect, and tailored to an improved understanding of the seismic phenomena and of their dynamics over time and space in all its shades. By surfing on some of the available literature, a critical investigation of the probability distributions best fitting earthquake sizes and inter-arrival times is performed, by using data on the Pacific Ring of Fire as illustrative example. As a by-product of our analysis, new ideas about adequate modelling of earthquake sizes and inter-event times together with the location of the earthquakes are advanced, which in turn could pave the way to further developments in a directional perspective.