Bayesian probabilities of earthquake occurrences in Shanxi rift system (China)

China has a long history of earthquake records. The Shanxi rift system (SRS) is situated along the axial zone of the domal uplift of the Shanxi Highlands and is the boundary between the Ordos block and the North China Plain block. Strong earthquakes in the SRS have been recorded since the thirteenth century. In our work, we applied the Bayesian probability method using extreme value distribution of earthquake occurrences to estimate the seismic hazard in the SRS. The seismic moment, slip rate, earthquake recurrence rate, and magnitude were considered as the basic parameters for computing the Bayesian prior estimates of the seismicity. These estimates were then updated in terms of Bayes’ theorem and historical estimates of seismicity in the SRS. The probability of occurrence of $$M_{\text{s}}=5.0$$ M s = 5.0 for Z1, Z2, and Z3 is less than 0.3, 0.1, and 0.6, respectively (T=5 years). The probability of the occurrence of M $$\ge$$ ≥ 8.0 is small for the whole SRS. The selection of upper bound magnitude probably influences the result, and the upper bound magnitude of Z1, Z2, and Z3 may be 7.5, 7.0, and 8.5, respectively. We obtained the values of the magnitude of completeness M c (3.2) and the Gutenberg–Richter b value before applying the Bayesian extreme value distribution of earthquake occurrences method. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014