“Black Swan” Statistics: on the Recurrence of Rare Strong Earthquakes

Thanks to the American essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the title “black swans” now describes unexpected, rare, and often destructive events and phenomena. The author attributed this beautiful image to extreme events that radically change the situation. It is often pointed out that the problem of “black swans” may be of key importance for the modern, extremely volatile, and potentially catastrophic world. “Black swans” appear suddenly, and it would be good to know at least some patterns of their appearance and frequency. It is known that the vast majority of various types of disasters, both of natural and man-made origin, is described by the power law of distribution, fi rst identifi ed for earthquakes (the Gutenberg—Richter earthquake recurrence law). More than that, the earthquake events are not only the very fi rst described by this law, but, perhaps, are the most famous, most provided with statistical data, and therefore the most studied. However, even for earthquakes, the nature of their statistics remains debatable. The article discusses the issues of the recurrence of strong earthquakes, the reduction of the caused losses, and earthquake insurance.

catastrophic earthquakes, rare destructive events, “black swans” statistics