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Why Are We So Bad at Predicting Earthquakes? (telegraph.co.uk)
In the wake of major earthquakes in both Japan and Ecuador, one British newspaper asks: Why are we so bad at predicting earthquakes? In 2015 seismologists told Vice, "The more we study them, the harder they look to predict, and "there's a shortage of instrumenation." But today the Telegraph newspaper concludes that we actually have two problems: first, "science is hopeless at predicting earthquakes and, second, we keep building cities on major fault-lines..." They cite a new book called Earth-Shattering Events which reports that nearly half the world's large cities are in earthquake-prone areas, adding, "we don't just build our cities on fault-lines, we also tend to rebuild them, in the same place, but no more robust, time and time again." In 1976 one quake in China killed more than 750,000 people, while a 2004 quake in Indonesia killed 170,000. "The Earth will move and there's not a thing we can do to stop it," the Telegraph concludes, arguing that we need to learn more from our past.
We know where earthquakes will be - along fault lines. When will it happen? When the tension gets too high. It's like asking what pebble will start a landslide, what snowflake will start an avalance or what straw will break the camel's back. The problem isn't the lack of an answer, the problem is that we're expecting an exact result to a complex and chaotic process. Would you also like a map of where lighting is going to strike?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Simpler answer,
We don't know very much.
This applies to most things, not just earthquakes,
Medicine, (why do we need so much testing? because we are taking a stab in the dark and seeing if it works)
Weather, how many are forecasts inaccurate.
In fact any system that is even mildly complex we blunder our way through, even an area like programming, where we know exactly how the system works, and all inputs, we still need to test rigorously in to ensure that we haven't made to may mistakes.
Also earth quakes are probably a chaotic system so we probably cannot get close to even knowing enough inputs to predict them, no matter how much we explore. (It doesn't mean we shouldn't try)
we know the sort of geology that is found in earthquake areas, so we can predict where they will happen; by measuring strain, etc, we can get an idea of when they will happen and what sort of magnitude. The trouble is that we (== common people, non scientists) expect answers that fit in with my everyday rulers and clocks (ie a few miles and days), but geological events are measured differently: hundreds of miles and decades/centuries; so the margins of error are too great for what we want.
If I place a vase of roses outside on a summer's day I can expect the flowers to be visited by bees, but I cannot predict which flower will be visited first or the minute when the first bee will come.