Tools for compiling the Global Earthquake History

Project Overview
This hazard global component project is devoted to building up Tools for compiling a Global Earthquake History, starting with the existing regional initiatives and anticipating new regional capacities yet to be developed. In particular by:

• Establishing a distributed, online resource, called “Global Archive of Historical Earthquake Studies”, where both reports and macroseismic data points can be uploaded, organized and made available to public. This resource will provide a framework for future development, so that the Global Earthquake History can be updated as new results become available.
• Supplying GEM with the best global parametric earthquake catalogue that can be compiled from current resources providing, as far as possible, a link to the background information.
• Complementing the catalogue entries with comments and, when possible, with earthquake parameters re-assessed from intensity data points and from historical evidence of length of rupture. Epistemic uncertainties will be emphasized rather than hidden, for the benefit of hazard assessments.

The consortium will mainly consider earthquakes with M≥7.0 at minimum, in the time window 1000 to 1903. The project will produce a common set of definitions, strategies, standards, quality criteria and formats for the compilation of historical earthquake data.

This project will draw on work that was achieved in several projects in many part of the world. In particular, the European project NERIES, module NA4 “Archive of Historical Earthquake Data” which laid down new standards for historical data compilation, will serve as a reference.

Goals

• To build up a Global Archive of Historical Earthquake Studies, in terms of volumes, papers, reports, etc., with related Macroseismic Data Points (MDPs) when available, and parametric catalogues.
• To compile a Global Parametric Earthquake Catalogue critically merging the most reliable current regional catalogues. The threshold will be Mw ≥ 7.0 as a minimum. The main time-window will be up to 1903, to match the start of the “Global Instrumental Catalogue” project time-window.
• To design the project website as the primary means of dissemination, from which it will be possible to access the catalogue, but also the supporting database materials, directly.

The consortium has planned its activities around 3 main tasks. These are described in further detail on a dedicated page.

Consortium
The 2-year project is coordinated by two leading institutions: Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Milan and the British Geological Survey (BGS), Edinburgh. Regional expertise and collaboration is sought on an ad hoc basis.

Progress and presentations
Follow progress through GEM Nexus.. we look forward to your comments and suggestions:
http://www.nexus.globalquakemodel.org/global-earthquake-history

Contact
Paola Albini (INGV) and Roger Musson (BGS) coordinate the project. They can be reached at albini[at]mi.ingv.it and rmwm[at]bgs.ac.uk.