The European Archive of Historical Earthquake Data (AHEAD): compilation, results, and perspectives.

摘要

Historical seismic catalogues in Europe have been mostly compiled on a national basis starting from historical data collectedand interpreted according to different procedures and varied levels of formalization. With few exceptions, the macroseismicdata that stand behind the catalogues are not available, or simply never existed. The present-day knowledge on pastseismicity in Europe is consequently far from being homogeneous. This situation affected the past efforts for the compilationof homogeneous, continent-wide catalogues and still restrains the ongoing initiatives on this topic. To overcome this situation,the NERIES NA4 project realized the European Archive of Historical Earthquake Data (AHEAD). AHEAD collects andputs together in a critical way the background information supporting European earthquakes between the years 1000 and1963. The collected information consists of the most significant, or recent, material supporting an earthquake, such as: i)studies that interpret the historical records in terms of Macroseismic Data-Points (MDPs); ii) studies that provide thehistorical records but not interpreted in terms of MDPs; iii) parameters from catalogues, only. AHEAD contains entriesrelated to more than 10.000 earthquakes, and the inventoried material is made available through the web. It also provides in astandardized database the MDPs that support about the 60% of the listed earthquakes. For a large number of them suchMDPs have been released for the first time by partner institutions in the framework of NERIES NA4. AHEAD is conceivedas an interactive tool for representing and improving the knowledge on historical earthquakes, with the aim of making ithomogeneous at a European level. Through the archive researchers can easily: 1) trace back the information supporting eachearthquake in order to reappraise and improve the knowledge of it; 2) compare the different studies on each earthquake andselect a preferred one. This is, for example, the procedure followed for the selection of data upon which the NERIES NA4European Earthquake Catalogue has been compiled. 3) help keeping the archive as much up-to-date as possible, commentingstudies, data, and parameters and feeding it with fresh studies.