Earthquake Parameters

Notes on parameters of earthquake-database:

	Earthquake Name If no earthquake name is given by the source, expressed in the reference field, the nearest city/village or region name has been chosen as earthquake name. All known aftershocks are indicated with the prefix "aftershock of ...".
	Country Each country was selected using its recent political boundaries.
	Source Date and Time The origin date and time of the earthquake that generated the strong-motion record is the first means of identification of each event. The source of the origin date and time is always the same as that for the epicentral location and is given in the reference field.
	Epicentre Co-ordinates Epicenters have been culled from special studies, adopted from bulletins of the International Seismological Centre, ISC, National Earthquake Information Center, NEIC, for recent strong earthquakes, and for small events re-assessed from a combination of strong-motion and seismographic data. Its locations were generally re-evaluated on distances based on the time lag between S-wave arrival time and trigger time or S-P lag. Many of the earthquakes are of moderate magnitude and are reported from a relatively large enough number of stations to ensure reasonable azimuthal coverage. The locations of the earthquakes archived in the database are therefore not likely to be in serious formal error. The latitude and longitude refer to WGS84 (World Geodetic System 1984).
	Focal Depth With the exception of cases for which P and SH wave modeling solutions are available, focal depth comes from the same source as the epicentre.
	Magnitudes Due to the availability of teleseismic data it was not possible to determine the values on all four magnitude-scales for all selected events. However, for each event at least one magnitude value is given. Whenever possible Ms rather than ML should be used in ground motion studies because the former is the best estimator of the size of a crustal earthquake, and because seismicity in Europe is generally evaluated in terms of Ms so far. Moreover there are no ML determinations in some parts of the study area. The use of a unified magnitude scale in ground motion studies is another important consideration (Ambraseys & Smit, 1998). Body-Wave Magnitude, Mb Body-wave magnitude is invariably taken from ISC determinations. Local (Richter) Magnitude, ML Local magnitude is the mean value of ML reported in regional and local bulletins. Surface-Wave Magnitude, Ms Surface wave magnitudes have been re-calculated for most of the events from the modified Prague formula using maximum amplitude/period ratios of surface waves (Ambraseys & Free, 1997), with station and distance corrections (Ambraseys & Douglas, 2000). Moment-Magnitude, Mw Moment magnitude Mw has been converted directly from Mo. Seismic Moment, Mo Seismic moments Mo are chiefly CMT Harvard estimates or values obtained from P and SH wave modeling (Centroid Moment Tensor).
	Epicentral Intensity, Io The two character fields give the epicentral intensity and its scale (European Macroseismic Scale 1992 or 1998, EMS92, EMS98; Geofina; Mercalli, Cancani, Sieberg, MCS; Modified Mercalli, MM; Medvedev, Sponheuer & Karnik 1964, MSK64; Rossi Forel, RF) has been defined, despite of a number of problems associated with the assessment of epicentral intensity. The intensity-values have been directly adopted from the literature or from bulletins without re-assessment.
	Fault Mechanism Fault mechanism has been determined wherever possible, from field observations, from source mechanism studies or has been adopted from the literature. Faulting is classified as "normal", "thrust", "strike slip" and "oblique".
	References Only the most important reference to documents or bulletins has been given from where most of the earthquake-parameters were adopted.