What is the theory that Professor Hayes and Dr. Kim Park are working on to predict when an earthquake is about to occur?

Dr. Kim Parker and Professor Hayes are characters in the disastrous movie named, San Andreas. They are working with Caltech as seismologist. In the movie, they were able to make a breakthrough by developing way to predict earthquake using electro-magnetic pulses.

Both the seismologist discovered such pulses in the Hoover Dam and went there to test their earthquake predicting model. They were correct in their prediction and the area was hit by a major earthquake of 7.1 Richter scale.