A Novel and Efficient Spatio-Temporal Clustering Algorithm to Discover Patterns in Indian Earthquake Data

Abstract

The seismic activity in India, including the Himalayas, the North-East region, and the Andaman-Nicobar Islands, is prominently displayed on the seismic map. It is important to analyze the specific characteristics of seismic events on the Indian sub-continent. This research paper introduces a new algorithm for data analysis using a partitioning technique that mines clustering patterns. The algorithm generates clusters of spatial and spatio-temporal data by distributing the data into spatial bins or buckets, identifying neighboring bins, and minimizing distance calculations. Furthermore, the selection of centroids is based on the density of data in the spatial region, utilizing a random selection method. It requires minimal parameter settings, enhancing its efficiency and practicality for analyzing large-scale spatio-temporal datasets. We validate the algorithm's efficacy through experiments conducted on the Indian earthquake spatio-temporal dataset, demonstrating its ability to detect spatio-temporal patterns and identify earthquake-prone regions.The conducted experiments reveal a correlation between the frequency of earthquake events and the number of clusters formed, indicating that regions with a higher occurrence of earthquakes exhibit a greater clustering tendency, signifying their susceptibility to seismic activity. The results imply promising clustering quality, with Silhouette index in the range of 0.88 to 0.93.