Do Enhanced Seismicity Catalogs Improve Aftershock Forecasts? A Test on the 2016-2017 Central Italy Earthquake Cascade

Artificial intelligence methods are revolutionizing modern seismology by offering unprecedentedly rich seismic catalogs. Recent developments in short-term aftershock forecasting show that Coulomb rate-and-state (CRS) models hold the potential to achieve operational skills comparable to standard statistical Epidemic-Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) models, but only when the near real-time data quality allows to incorporate a more detailed representation of sources and receiver fault populations. In this framework, the high-resolution reconstructions of the seismicity patterns introduced by machine-learning-derived earthquake catalogs represent a unique opportunity to test whether they can be exploited to improve the predictive power of aftershock forecasts.