Karin Sesetyan

The SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC) 1000–1899

In the frame of the European Commission project “Seismic Hazard Harmonization in Europe” (SHARE), aiming at harmonizing seismic hazard at a European scale, the compilation of a homogeneous, European parametric earthquake catalogue was planned. The goal was to be achieved by considering the most updated historical dataset and assessing homogenous magnitudes, with support from several institutions. This paper describes the SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC), which covers the time window 1000–1899. It strongly relies on the experience of the European Commission project “Network of Research Infrastructures for European Seismology” (NERIES), a module of which was dedicated to create the European “Archive of Historical Earthquake Data” (AHEAD) and to establish methodologies to homogenously derive earthquake parameters from macroseismic data. AHEAD has supplied the final earthquake list, obtained after sorting duplications out and eliminating many fake events; in addition, it supplied the most updated historical dataset. Macroseismic data points (MDPs) provided by AHEAD have been processed with updated, repeatable procedures, regionally calibrated against a set of recent, instrumental earthquakes, to obtain earthquake parameters. From the same data, a set of epicentral intensity-to-magnitude relations has been derived, with the aim of providing another set of homogeneous Mw estimates. Then, a strategy focussed on maximizing the homogeneity of the final epicentral location and Mw, has been adopted. Special care has been devoted also to supply location and Mw uncertainty. The paper focuses on the procedure adopted for the compilation of SHEEC and briefly comments on the achieved results.

The 2013 European Seismic Hazard Model: key components and results

The 2013 European Seismic Hazard Model (ESHM13) results from a community-based probabilistic seismic hazard assessment supported by the EU-FP7 project “Seismic Hazard Harmonization in Europe” (SHARE, 2009–2013). The ESHM13 is a consistent seismic hazard model for Europe and Turkey which overcomes the limitation of national borders and includes a through quantification of the uncertainties. It is the first completed regional effort contributing to the “Global Earthquake Model” initiative. It might serve as a reference model for various applications, from earthquake preparedness to earthquake risk mitigation strategies, including the update of the European seismic regulations for building design (Eurocode 8), and thus it is useful for future safety assessment and improvement of private and public buildings. Although its results constitute a reference for Europe, they do not replace the existing national design regulations that are in place for seismic design and construction of buildings. The ESHM13 represents a significant improvement compared to previous efforts as it is based on (1) the compilation of updated and harmonised versions of the databases required for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment, (2) the adoption of standard procedures and robust methods, especially for expert elicitation and consensus building among hundreds of European experts, (3) the multi-disciplinary input from all branches of earthquake science and engineering, (4) the direct involvement of the CEN/TC250/SC8 committee in defining output specifications relevant for Eurocode 8 and (5) the accounting for epistemic uncertainties of model components and hazard results. Furthermore, enormous effort was devoted to transparently document and ensure open availability of all data, results and methods through the European Facility for Earthquake Hazard and Risk (www.efehr.org).

Rapid Earthquake Loss Assessment After Damaging Earthquakes

This article summarizes the work done over last decades regarding the development of new approaches and setting up of new applications for earthquake rapid response systems that function to estimate earthquake losses in quasi real time after an earthquake. After a critical discussion of relevant earthquake loss estimation methodologies, the essential features and the characteristics of the available loss estimation software are summarized. Currently operating near real time loss estimation tools can be classified under two main categories depending on the size of area they cover: Global and Local Systems. For the global or regional near real time loss estimation systems: GDACS, WAPMERR, PAGER, ELER and SELENA methodologies are. Examples are provided for the local rapid earthquake loss estimation systems including: Taiwan Earthquake Rapid Reporting System, Real-time Earthquake Assessment Disaster System in Yokohama, Real Time Earthquake Disaster Mitigation System of the Tokyo Gas Co., IGDAS Earthquake Protection System and Istanbul Earthquake Rapid Response System.

A Comparative Study of European Earthquake Loss Estimation Tools for a Scenario in Istanbul

A damage estimation exercise has been carried out using the building stock inventory and population database of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and selected European earthquake loss estimation packages: KOERILOSS, SELENA, ESCENARIS, SIGE, and DBELA. The input ground-motions, common to all models, correspond to a “credible worst case scenario” involving the rupture of the four segments of the Main Marmara Fault closest to Istanbul in a Mw 7.5 earthquake. The aim of the exercise is to assess the applicability of the selected software packages to earthquake loss estimation in the context of rapid post-earthquake response in European urban centers. The results in terms of predicted building damage and social losses are critically compared amongst each other, as well as with the results of previous scenario-based earthquake loss assessments carried out for the study area. The key methodological aspects and data needs for European rapid post-earthquake loss estimation are thus identified.

Development of Earthquake Lossmap for Europe

For almost real-time estimation of the losses after a major earthquake in the Euro-Mediterranean region, the Joint Research Area-3 (JRA-3) component of the European Union (EU) Project “Network of Research Infrastructures for European Seismology – NERIES” foresees (at several levels of sophistication): 1. Finding the most likely location of the source of the earthquake using regional seismotectonic data base; 2. estimation of the spatial distribution of selected site-specific ground motion parameters; 3. correlation/verifyication/enrichment of the estimated ground shaking information with the available on-line strong motion data; and 4. estimation of physical damage and casualty distributions. These LossMaps will provide the required vital information within minutes after an earthquake to European emergency response agencies, in a manner similar to the United States Geological Survey (USGS)s Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) system. A methodology that incorporates the regional dependencies and sources of uncertainty stemming from ground motion predictions, fault finiteness, site modifications, inventory of elements subjected to the hazard, and the vulnerability relationships is under preparation with researchers from Imperial College, NORSAR and ETH-Zurich. A pilot application is established for Turkey that encompasses the gridded earthquake source, Quaternary, Tertiary, Mesozoic (QTM) geological classification and physical and demographic inventory mapping for the whole country. Within the scope of this study, loss estimations were computed for the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake using several approaches and comparisons made with observed values. The LossMap tool will be available for the first estimation of damage immediately after an earthquake in Turkey by the end of 2007 and for the whole Euro-Med region by the end of 2009.

Reply to "comment on 'recent developments of the Middle East catalog'"

We hereby reply to the comments of S. Mostafa Mousavi (2016) (hereafter Mousavi 2016) on our paper published in Journal of Seismology (2014) 18:749–772 (hereafter Zare et al. 2014). We thank the reader for the time spent and attention given to the paper; however, we think that he has carried out a new individual and independent study which can be interesting, but it seems not to be relevant to our work and it might be reviewed and qualified in a separate review process. In this regard, two major ambiguity of his work can be noted: