Historical Seismology & Paleoseismology

Data on earlier earthquakes provide important information for anticipatory mitigation measures and enable us to pinpoint where events occurred and estimate their magnitude. Damaging powerful earthquakes are relatively rare in Switzerland, so no instrumental data on them are available yet. Consequently, we have to draw on chronicles from the past, analyse this information using historical methods, and use palaeoseismological methods to interpret geological traces of major earthquakes.

Illustration: An earthquake map of Switzerland (1880–1909) drawn in 1911 by Johann Jakob Früh, who chaired the Swiss Earthquake Commission at the time.