In Greece, astonishing success has reportedly been achieved in predicting earthquakes by monitoring the geoelectric potential changes. The method, called the VAN-method taking the initials of Varotsos, Alexopoulos and Nomikos, claims that earthquakes with magnitude greater than ca. 5 occurring in Greece can be predicted within the errors of 100km in epicenter and 0.7 in magnitude. The lead time is between several hours and ca. 20 days. The actual success rate and alarm rate for the recent one year are both estimated to be about 60%. Some technical aspects and the outline of suggested physical mechanism of the method are reviewed. A brief introduction of our attempt to apply the method in Japan is also given.
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