הטמעת שאלון עדכני לקביעת עוצמות סיסמיות של רעידות אדמה בישראל

The present working group was established on the request of Dr. Avi Shapira, the chair of the Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee for Earthquake Preparedness in Israel, in order to implement an updated macroseismic intensity questionnaire at the website of the Seismology Department, the Geophysical Institute of Israel (GII), so as to collect the data and evaluate the spread and level of seismic intensities of felt events, automatically in near real time. The group included experts from the Seismology Department, GII, who gained much experience in collecting macroseismic data; the Geological Survey of Israel who study the present and past seismicity of Israel, operate HAZUS and have a background on statistical Geography; and experts from the Department of Structural Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, who study the dynamic instability of structures in Israel. The group held several working meetings, conducted an overview of the existing macroseismic data in Israel, consulted with world-known experts, and recommended as follows: 1. To implement the EMS-98 macroseismic questionnaire in the website of the Seismological Department, GII, in Hebrew and English, of the version received from Dr. Roger Musson from the British Geological Survey (BGS), instead of the existing one. This was already done and should be maintained continuously, for that such a data is vital for a wide spectrum of earthquake disciplines. The collected data should be open and available for research use. 2. To widen the awareness and accessibility of the public to the macroseismic questionnaire, including the Arabic, Russian and Amharic speaking communities. Accessibility should be available via the main social networking websites, by a wide variety of tools, in real time. 3. To modify the questionnaire according to the local and typical building styles and conditions in Israel. This needs much skill and experience in evaluating the macroseismic data and can be done by an ongoing research. 4. To encourage research on macroseismic intensities. This is certainly needed for updating the relationship between seismic intensities and various earthquake parameters, extending the EMS-98 for the analysis of historical earthquakes, constructing iso-seismal maps of past and modern events, etc. 5. To guide potential surveyors on how to evaluate high degrees of seismic intensities that is based on structural damage. The scarcity of damaging events in Israel prevents the gain of such experience which alternatively can be achieved by extensive research as well as experience from around the world.