XXVII GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE EUROPEAN SEISMOLOGICAL COMMISSION

LISBON UNIVERSITY, LISBON, PORTUGAL  10-15 September 2000

SUBCOMMISSION  WORKSHOPS

 WSA-1 "New perspectives in historical earthquake investigation"

Convenor:V. Castelli (geoter@wnt.it), P. Labak (geofpela@savba.sk), J. Costa Nunes*

* = to be confirmed

Dr. Viviana Castelli, Osservatorio Geofisico Sperimentale, Viale Indipendenza, 180, 62100 Macerata Italia; Tel +39 733 279127; Fax +39 733 279121,

Dr. Peter Labak, Geophysical Institute Slovak Academy of Sciences ,Dubravska cesta, SK-842 28 Bratislava, Slovak Republic; Tel: +421 7 5941 0610; Fax: +421 7 5941 0626

J.Costa Nunes, Instituto de Meteorologia, Rua C Aeroporto de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal; Tel. +351 21 8483961; Fax: + 351 21 8402370

For the last 10 odd years, historical seismology had methodological discussions and large-scale innovative research as its main arenas.. During the "age of available knowledge improved", some widely accepted methodological patterns were evolved, professional historians earned a place in the field, many thousands of earthquakes were studied. The emphasis was on recurring to "good" sources, setting to right wrong earthquake parameters, detecting "fake quakes". That age is now in the past, large-scale historical earthquake investigation is undergoing a lull, researchers are dwindling, and probably many outsiders do feel justified in thinking that historical seismology has had its say and exhausted its momentum. On the other hand, the reality is that most of the huge new datasets were never fed up into parametric earthquake catalogues, the new methods don't seem to be very widely applied in everyday practice and quite a few new methodological and applicative angles could bear to be explored more deeply. This session would like to herald the opening of a new age in historical earthquake investigation ("the age of discovery and practising" ?) by carrying out an operative survey of goals still to be accomplished and new perspectives of research on which to go on. Recommended topics include: large earthquakes or minor ones ? (what to      study and where); "unknown" earthquakes (detection techniques, gauging their impact, using them); magnitude determination for historical earthquakes; intensity assessment for historical earthquake sequences; where the EMS98 scale fears to thread (tiny settlements, single buildings); the uses of seismic histories at the site; damage distribution in urban areas (perspectives, uses and pitfalls of damage scenarios); completeness of parametric earthquake catalogues and/or historical data (general theory and case histories).  

Fuente: http://www.igidl.ul.pt/esc2000/scient_prog.htm#worka