ASMI Archivio Storico Macrosismico ItalianoItalian Archive of Historical Earthquake Data

The Catalogue lists earthquakes that occurred in Italy between 461 B.C. and 1997, and earthquakes that occurred in the general Mediterranean area between the VIII century b.C. and the XV century. This version (CFTI5Med) features: the retrieval and formatting of over 23,000 original bibliographic documents, transcribed or printed, nearly 50% of those utilized in the CFTI5Med. These documents are now available on-line as fully searchable pdf files; a full geological reinterpretation, georeferencing and reprocessing of over 2,300 descriptions of earthquake-induced environmental effects, which are now all available and searchable in a user-friendly web-GIS environment; the elaboration of a number of texts and commentaries that were missing from the CFTI4Med version of the catalogue; a totally re-designed and more efficient web- and web-GIS interface. The new Catalogo dei Forti Terremoti in ltalia includes 1,259 earthquakes that occurred in Italy (98 of which are currently considered false). No commentaries on the main earthquake effects were available in the previous version of the catalogue for 87 of such events as they had not been updated with respect to the information supplied in Guidoboni e Comastri (2005) for the 1000 AD-1500 AD time interval. The commentaries concerning the most significant effects of Italian medieval earthquakes have now been elaborated and are available along with the information on more recent events. For the remainder of the earthquakes first presented with the CFTI4Med - those that occurred in the general Mediterranean area away from the Italian coasts - the new catalogue provides only the felt reports and basic epicentral parameters.

ECOS-09 (Earthquake Catalog of Switzerland 2009) is the current earthquake catalog of Switzerland. It integrates the following basic information:

• The Macroseismic Earthquake Catalog of Switzerland, with events from AD 250, revised and supplemented to 2008;
• Yearly reports of the Swiss earthquake commission since 1879;
• Earthquake locations of the instrumental networks of the SED since 1975;
• Supplemented by 12 earthquake catalogs from neighboring and international agencies.

The macro-seismic part of the catalog is based on the analysis of observed and historical impacts of earthquakes on people and the environment. The epicenters and earthquake magnitudes are estimated from this information. The instrumental part of the catalog is based on the analysis of measured ground-motion, from which the location of the epicenter and the magnitude can be directly computed. ECOS-09 covers the period AD 250 to the end of 2008. The available data covers Switzerland and bordering regions (Swiss coordinates (km): 460-882 / 20-350; geographical coordinates approx.: 5.6-11.1E / 45.4-48.3N). Hours are given in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

he 1855 earthquake at Visp remains the strongest in the last 300 yr in Switzerland. It caused heavy damage in the region of the middle Valais. We reconstructed the damage field of this event studying also site effects and building vulnerability. The key factors in such a study are the availability and accessibility of sufficient historical data. Given the existence of a complete contemporary damage assessment and the availability of early statistics, our investigation drew upon an excellent pool of data. These sources enabled us to quantitatively analyse the damage field on the village level. Other historical sources described some of the losses with more detail but not across the whole area. These data were qualitatively analysed and then used to calibrate and verify the outcomes of the quantitative analysis. When it was possible to describe the damage fields of single villages, as with Visp, a high percentage of damaged buildings could be located so exactly as to foster further investigation. In addition we identified several secondary effects such as rock fall, landslides and changes in the subsurface. The observed damages support the thesis of a normal fault striking along the Valley of Visp (north–south) and dipping to the west.