Earthquakes are the cause of severe damage to human beings and property. It is therefore essential to take all possible steps to reduce this damage. Carrying out this work needs some centralised body in charge of determining as rapidly as possible the parameters of the seismic sources. It is technically possible to determine with sufficient accuracy and considerable speed the place of occurrence of an earthquake, which allows effective intervention of emergency services and of scientific parties. For the European-Mediterranean region, this function is conducted by the EMSC using data from its widespread network of members and other institutions.
The final determination of epicentres is undertaken, for the world as a whole, by the International Seismological Centre; this body supplies results with an average time-lag of two years. The European Seismological Commission (ESC), a regional commission of the International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior (IASPEI), which is itself a specialised association of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG), a member organisation of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), considering that the European-Mediterranean region displayed a potentially dangerous seismic activity, considering furthermore that it was necessary, for reasons of protection of society and evaluation of earthquake damage in the region for which it is competent, that a scientific body should undertake the very rapid (close to real-time) determination of the epicentres of potentially destructive European-Mediterranean earthquakes, as well as the rapid determination of earthquakes of less magnitude, recommended in 1975 the creation of the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC). This recommendation subsequently gained the support of IASPEI and IUGG. The centre commenced operation at the IPG in Strasbourg on 1 January 1976 and formally received its statutes in 1983. The EMSC, therefore, continued, within the European-Mediterranean region, the activity of the former Central International Bureau of Seismology, housed at the Institute of Physics of the Earth in Strasbourg, which ceased its activity in 1975.
The EMSC was charged in 1987 by the Council of Europe to provide the latter with seismic warnings in the framework of the Open Partial Agreement (OPA) on the prevention of, protection against, and organisation of relief in major natural and technological disasters.
As a result of the technical evolution that allows the distribution of the principal task of EMSC into a number of seismological centres integrated in a communication network, the Assembly of EMSC in Strasbourg, April 1993, proposed that a strategy be formulated to take advantage of the new developments. The statutes were modified as a consequence of the Extraordinary Assembly on 13 December 1993 and the seat of EMSC moved to the Laboratoire de Détection Géophysique du Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA/LDG) in Bruyères-le-Châtel.,Essone, France.
More information can be obtained on their home page at www.emsc-csem.org
/emsc.html
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Agencija Republike Slovenije za okolje, Urad za seizmologijo in geologijo, Dunajska 47/VI, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Tel: +386 1 4787250, Fax: +386
1 4787295.
Last Revised: 21 March 2007
Page previously maintained by Alice Walker
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Global Seismology and Geomagnetism, British Geological Survey, Murchison House,
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