The Study of Poorly Documented Historical Earthquakes in France through a multidisciplinary approach.
Abstract
This methodological paper will compare two different regional studies that are very important in French seismic history In the Poitou-Touraine region many earthquakes are not well documented : a lot of documents have been destroyed (during the French Revolution and the Second World War), and few local archives have been preserved. The Provence region, on the other hand,is better documented but with important differences between urban and rural areas. These exemples show the necessary feed-back that is required between historians, seismologists and architects in the study of important historical earthquakes. First, thanks to the historical critique it is possible to replace the few available documents in their proper socio-economical context. Second, all types of proofs (geological, archeological and architectural, hand-writing and printed documents) have to be confronted with a multidisciplinary approach. Third, the study of the historical context allows to choose between several hypothesis about global damage and spatial distribution. This methodology helps the seismolgist to retain the most reasonable hypothesis and thus compute the macroseismic intensities.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2002
- Bibcode:
- 2002AGUFM.S12C..12Q
- Keywords:
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- 7299 General or miscellaneous