The European Preinstrumental Earthquake Catalogue EPICA, the 1000–1899 catalogue for the European Seismic Hazard Model 2020

Abstract

The European PreInstrumental Earthquake CAtalogue (EPICA) (Rovida and Antonucci, 2021; https://doi.org/10.13127/epica.1.1) is the 1000–1899 seismic catalogue compiled for the European Seismic Hazard Model 2020 (ESHM20), an outcome of the project Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe (SERA), in the framework of the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. EPICA is the update of the SHARE European Earthquake Catalogue (SHEEC) 1000–1899, with which it shares the main principles – mostly transparency, repeatability and continent-wide harmonisation of data – as well as the compilation strategies and methods. Version 1.1 of EPICA contains 5703 earthquakes with either maximum intensity ≥5 or Mw≥4.0, with a spatial coverage from the Atlantic Ocean to the west to 32∘ E in longitude, and from the Mediterranean Sea to Northern Europe. EPICA relies upon the updated knowledge of the European preinstrumental seismicity provided by the data gathered in the European Archive of Historical Earthquake Data (AHEAD). Such data are both macroseismic intensity data supplied by descriptive historical seismological studies and online macroseismic databases, and parameters contained in regional catalogues. As done for the compilation of SHEEC 1000–1899, these datasets were thoroughly analysed in order to select the most representative of the knowledge of each earthquake, independently from national constraints. Selected intensity distributions are processed with three methods to determine location and magnitude based on the attenuation of macroseismic intensity and are combined with parameters harmonised from modern regional catalogues. This paper describes the compilation procedure of EPICA version 1.1, its input data, the assessment of the earthquake parameters and the resulting catalogue, which is finally compared with its previous version. Technical solutions for accessing the catalogue, both as downloadable files and through web services, are also illustrated.