RST Analysis of Anomalous TIR Sequences in Relation with Earthquakes Occurred in Turkey in the Period 2004–2015

first_pagesettings Open AccessArticle RST Analysis of Anomalous TIR Sequences in Relation with Earthquakes Occurred in Turkey in the Period 2004–2015 by Carolina Filizzola 1ORCID,Angelo Corrado 2,Nicola Genzano 2ORCID,Mariano Lisi 1ORCID,Nicola Pergola 1ORCID,Roberto Colonna 2 andValerio Tramutoli 2,*ORCID 1 Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, National Research Council, 85050 Potenza, Italy 2 School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, 85100 Potenza, Italy * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Academic Editor: Stephan Havemann Remote Sens. 2022, 14(2), 381; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14020381 Received: 12 November 2021 / Revised: 8 January 2022 / Accepted: 11 January 2022 / Published: 14 January 2022 (This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Remote Sensing Systems for Disaster Management and Risk Mitigation) Download PDF Browse Figures Citation Export Abstract The paper provides, for the first time, a long-term (>10 years) analysis of anomalous transients in Earth’s emitted radiation over Turkey and neighbouring regions. The RST (Robust Satellite Techniques) approach is used to identify Significant Sequences of Thermal Anomalies (SSTAs) over about 12 years (May 2004 to October 2015) of night-time MSG-SEVIRI satellite images. The correlation analysis is performed with earthquakes with M ≥ 4, which occurred in the investigated period/region within a pre-defined space-time volume around SSTA occurrences. It confirms, also for Turkey, the possibility to qualify SSTAs among the candidate parameters of a multi-parametric system for time-Dependent Assessment of Seismic Hazard (t-DASH). After analysing about 4000 images (about 400 million of single satellite records), just 155 SSTAs (about 4 every 100 images) were isolated; 115 (74% out of the total) resulted in earthquake-related (false-positive rate 26%). Results of the error diagram confirms a non-casual correlation between RST-based SSTAs and earthquake occurrences, with probability gain values up to 2.2 in comparison with the random guess. The analysis, separately performed on Turkish areas characterized by different faults and earthquakes densities, demonstrates the SSTA correlation with a dynamic seismicity more than with static tectonic settings.