Global Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue

The main purpose of the project is to compile a Reference Global Instrumental Seismic Catalogue (1900-2009) to be used by GEM for characterization of the spatial distribution of seismicity, the magnitude-frequency relation and the maximum magnitude.

The project has a budget of 495,000 Euro and will take 27 months to complete. By May 2012 the consortium aspects to deliver the following: 

• 110 years of relocated earthquake hypocenters;
• Recomputed M_s values for relocated events;
• M_w values based on seismic moment where possible (mainly 1980-2009) and proxy values in other cases using appropriate empirical relationships;
• A database with above information and reference to original sources including scanned historical bulletin pages.

Consortium
The consortium consists of international experts in the field, led by the International Seismological Centre (ISC). Dmitry Storchak coordinates the project, with scientific input from Willie Lee:

• Dmitry Storchak (ISC)
• Domenico Di Giacomo (ISC)
• James Harris (ISC)
• István Bondár (ISC)
• Bob Engdahl (Colorado University)
• Antonio Villaseñor (IES Jaume Almera)
• Willie Lee (USGS, emeritus)
  
• Peter Bormann (GFZ, emeritus)
  
• Graziano Ferrari (SISMOS)
• Peter Suhadolc and colleagues from Japan, Germany, US & UK as observers on behalf of IASPEI

 

Tasks
The work is divided in 6 tasks, which are each carried out by combinations of the experts and their teams.

T1 Earthquake Relocation: Bob Engdahl and István Bondár
T2 M_s Computation: Domenico Di Giacomo, Dmitry Storchak, István Bondár and Peter Bormann
T3 Historical Seismic Bulletin Processing: Dmitry Storchak, Domenico Di Giacomo, junior and technical staff at ISC, Graziano Ferrari, Antonio Villaseñor and Willie Lee
T4 M_w Computation and Scientific Evaluation: Willie Lee and members of the first three groups.
T5 Data Integration, Management and Dissemination: Dmitry Storchak, James Harris and IT staff at the ISC
T6 Overall Project Management: Dmitry Storchak

Read more about the tasks... 

Progress and presentations

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

Older presentations:

• GEM Outreach Meeting (June 2010)
• GEM Outreach Meeting (June 2011) 
  
• IUGG Melbourne - Engdahl (July 2011)

Contact
The global Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue project is coordinated by Dmitry Storchak. He can be reached at dmitry[at]isc.ac.uk.