Establishing integrated virtual access (VA) to data and services for Engineering Seismology: the VA3 work package of the EU project SERA

Abstract

Virtual Access (VA) is an effective form to grant data provisions to scientists and professionals. The VA3 of the EU project SERA (www.sera-eu.org) aims to offer data and services for engineering seismology. The data provisions are constituted by well-established European-wise Research Infrastructures (RI) coordinated and hosted at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), namely the Engineering Strong Motion database (ESM), the European Archive of Historical Earthquake Data (AHEAD), and the European Database of Seismogenic Faults (EDSF). These RI are part of the seismological services of the ESFRI research infrastructure EPOS (European Plate Observing System). The challenge of this VA project is to put together three different data types in terms of nature, source, and collection strategy but share the same end-users’ community. Past attempts in relating these data types do exists, but they were performed on a very focused task based goal (e.g. seismic hazard studies), and not meant to establish a permanent relation embedded into each database structure. In this presentation, we will illustrate how the three different services are being integrated in an end-user-oriented infrastructure. This newly-designed tool will allow users to access the data they need and receive support on their use through a single access point and in a transparent way relative to the variety, needs, and routines of the data producers. The SERA project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No.730900.