A method for computing the recurrence probability of large earthquakes based on empirical distribution

On the basis of historic recurrence and seismotectonic analogy, we presented a method for calculating earthquake recurrence probability in a period in the future by using empirical distribution function. It adopted the Monte Carlo method to sample from a lot of earthquake sequences to simulate the occurrence of future large earthquakes, so as to achieve statistical large earthquake occurrence probability. Besides, this method never makes assumption that the earthquake recurrence data is according with a certain kind of distribution model. Taking the Luhuo segment and the Daofu segment along the Xianshuihe fault zone as examples, the calculation results showed that the large earthquake occurrence probability in the future 50 years on those two segments are 0.15 and 0.31, respectively.