A GeoPackage implementation for the new version of Earthquake Environmental Effects Catalogue (EEE Catalogue) in the context of GeoSciencesIR project

Abstract

The Earthquake Environmental Effects Catalogue (EEE Catalogue) represents a global database of environmental and geological effects induced by recent, historical and paleoearthquakes. These coseismic effects include among others surface faulting, ground subsidence, ground cracks, slope movements, liquefaction, tsunamis, hydrogeological anomalies. The observed relevance of earthquake environmental effects as a major source of damage, in addition to vibratory ground motion, confirms how the knowledge of this type of effects can be essential for seismic hazard and intensity assessment. Therefore, the EEE Catalogue can be considered as an helpful tool for land planning, particularly in areas of high seismicity. The first version of EEE Catalogue was launched in 2011 and was designed in PHP format. The structure of this catalogue is based on collecting data at three different levels of increasing detail, corresponding to three different tables: Earthquake, Locality, Site. The Earthquake features provide general information on the seismic event. The Locality features contain information on the features of a specific locality where some coseismic effects have occurred. The Site features provide information at the site of each earthquake environmental effect, including detailed characteristics on the type of earthquake. The structure of the catalogue is completed by Country features, consisting of point geometry. The focus of this work is the new release of the EEE Catalogue to populate the Research Infrastructure of GeoSciences IR. The GeoSciences IR aims to create a research infrastructure for the Italian Network of Geological Surveys (RISG), coordinated by the Geological Survey of Italy (ISPRA). In this framework, for the GeoSciences IR is mandatory to be in compliance with FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reuse) principles to improve data sharing. Data that become part of the infrastructure must be harmonized in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive and FAIR principles. A GeoPackage implementation  of the EEE Catalogue has been carried out. GeoPackage represents an open format for geospatial information developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). This format has several advantages including platform independence, versatile data support, large storage capacity, and maintenance of relations between database tables. The EEE Catalogue structure has been modified and improved. Furthermore, because of the complexity of the dataset and the need to enter new records into the database, new code lists were implemented, whereby a specific database field is filled by a list of predefined attributes. The main challenge of the new release is the semantic standardization on the basis of standard vocabularies (e.g., INSPIRE, GeoSCiML).