Earthquake-db: Historical Earthquakes of the Dead Sea Transform

An open geospatial database and research platform for historical earthquakes in the Dead Sea Transform. It integrates documentary records, archaeological evidence, and environmental observations into a harmonized GIScience framework, enabling standardized documentation, spatial analysis, and visualization of earthquake damage and environmental effects across the Levant. The project promotes reproducible research, open data, and interdisciplinary collaboration in historical seismology, archaeoseismology, paleoseismology & geospatial information science.

Project Objectives

The project pursues five complementary objectives that support the development of earthquake-db as an open geospatial research platform: 

  • Building a geospatial database
    Develop a standardized geospatial database integrating historical earthquake events, documented damage, and environmental effects into a unified GIScience framework.
  • Improving historical earthquake records
    Refine and harmonize documentary, archaeological, and paleoseismic evidence to enhance the spatial, temporal, and descriptive consistency of historical earthquake records across the Levant.
  • Enabling spatial analysis of earthquake effects
    Provide a robust platform for investigating the spatial distribution of earthquake damage and environmental effects, supporting analyses of seismic patterns, landscape responses, and regional vulnerability.
  • Supporting open and reproducible research
    Promote transparent and interdisciplinary research through standardized data structures, interactive geospatial visualization, open-access datasets, and reproducible analytical workflows.
  • Bridging past and future seismic risk
    Improve understanding of long-term seismic behaviour by integrating historical evidence into research on seismic hazards, environmental change, disaster resilience, and risk assessment.

See the complete code in GitHub & formal releases in Zenodo

For items of damage & environmental effects see the digital collection at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library

 Publications

  • Zohar, M., & Williams, J. (2025). Present to Past Reflection? Notes on the 1114/5 C.E. Earthquake Sequence After the February 2023 Türkiye Doublet. Seismological Research Letters.  https://doi.org/10.1785/0220250252     |     pdf 

Additional Material

  • Zohar, M., & Salamon, A., Rubin, B. Historical earthquakes in Israel and its surroundings: reassessment of the past accounts of historical earthquakes in Israel and its surroundings. Poster presented at the 2026 annual conference of the Israel Geological Society. Kfar-Blum (Israel), February 2026   |     poster 
  • Zohar, M., & Williams, J. Revisiting the 1114/5 CE earthquake sequence in southern Turkey through modern lens. EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria, 3–8 May 2026, EGU26-2176, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu26-2176, 2026.  |     poster

Data & resources