A tool for archiving and updating knowledge about past earthquakes in Central America

Abstract

In 2019, we released a prototype version of an online tool called MARCA-GEHN that combines an earthquake catalog and a macroseismic archive for a Central American (CA) sector, which was realized as part of an international project between Italy and four CA countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua). The aim was to build a transnational, common, quality-controlled archive of macroseismic observations capable of documenting and updating the parameters of the main earthquakes recorded in the international historical and instrumental catalogs. Collecting the original documents, critically revising them, and organizing them in a public, open data format is a long, potentially endless process. Thanks to past experience in Europe and the additional efforts of the local CA scientific communities, MARCA-GEHN was updated in 2023. The current database contains about 70 earthquakes with intensities observed at the sites, about 2200 intensity points related to more than 1100 locations. This archive can help improve information on past and current earthquakes, and it is a powerful tool for constraining the seismic sources, a key element of hazard and risk analyses. We briefly present the structure of the archive, the shortcuts for the queries, some results obtained so far, and potentialities for the future.