EPICA - European PreInstrumental Earthquake CAtalogue, version 1.1

The European PreInstrumental earthquake CAtalogue EPICA is the 1000-1899 seismic catalogue compiled within the framework of the SERA (Seismology and Earthquake Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliance for Europe) Horizon 2020 project for the European Seismic Hazard Model 2020 (ESHM20). EPICA shares the same main principles of transparency, repeatability, and continent wide harmonization of data and procedures, as well as the compilation strategies and methods with SHEEC 1000-1899, of which it is an update. EPICA relies upon the knowledge of European preinstrumental seismicity gathered in the European Archive of Historical Earthquake Data AHEAD, in terms of macroseismic intensity data supplied by descriptive historical seismological studies and macroseismic databases, and parameters from catalogues. Multiple datasets available in AHEAD for each earthquake were thoroughly analyzed and compared, in order to select the most representative of the knowledge of the earthquake, independently from national limitations. Available intensity data are processed with specific methods. Locations and harmonized magnitudes from selected regional catalogues are adopted if intensity data are not available, otherwise they are combined with those from intensity data for the sake of homogeneity. EPICA version 1.1 contains 5703 earthquakes with either maximum observed intensity ≥5 or Mw ≥4.0. It relies on 160 sources of MDPs and 39 regional catalogues selected from AHEAD. Parameters are newly assessed from MDPs with harmonized procedures for 3297 earthquakes.