Historical Earthquake Database of the Dead Sea Transform Region

earthquake-db is a harmonized, versioned, and openly available geospatial research dataset of historical earthquake effects in the Dead Sea Transform (DST) region and adjacent parts of the Levant and eastern Mediterranean. It is designed to support reproducible research in historical seismology, archaeoseismology, earthquake geology, Historical GIS, hazard studies, cultural-heritage research, and the critical evaluation of pre-instrumental earthquake evidence.

The database brings together heterogeneous evidence that is commonly dispersed across historical catalogues, documentary sources, archaeological publications, geological and palaeoseismological studies, and environmental-effect inventories. These materials are represented in a standardized relational and geospatial structure linking earthquake events, named sites, reported damage observations, and environmental earthquake effects. The data model is intended to preserve source-level distinctions while enabling comparison, filtering, aggregation, mapping, and statistical analysis across records that differ in chronology, spatial precision, evidential basis, and confidence.

Dataset components. The release contains: (1) an earthquake-event catalogue for the DST region; (2) a geographic gazetteer of historical, archaeological, and modern sites; (3) a harmonized table of earthquake-damage observations; (4) a harmonized table of environmental earthquake effects; (5) documentation describing the database and map-oriented data fields; (6) data-integrity and quality-assurance outputs; and (7) a reproducible statistical-analysis notebook. Existing CSV filenames are retained to support stable downstream use and version comparison.

Evidence and uncertainty. Historical earthquake records are not treated as equivalent to modern instrumental observations. Individual entries may reflect different source traditions, degrees of chronological resolution, location certainty, interpretation, and scholarly reliability. Confidence information is therefore retained as an explicit analytical attribute. Users should evaluate records in relation to their original sources, the documented harmonization decisions, and the intended scale of analysis. The database is a research infrastructure for critical analysis and does not by itself constitute a complete probabilistic seismic-hazard model.

Version 1.1.0. This release adds the first feature-complete interactive web-mapping interface, titled Dead Sea Transform Historical Earthquakes. The map loads the authoritative CSV files directly in the browser, without a manually maintained GeoJSON duplicate or server-side database. It provides selectable light, OpenStreetMap, and satellite basemaps; separate earthquake-damage and environmental-effects layers; site-level aggregation; earthquake-grouped, vertically scrollable popups; confidence filtering using a fixed ordered scale; damage-severity and environmental-effect symbology; map summaries; site search; updated explanatory text; and revised quality-assurance documentation. Environmental-effect types are distinguished by symbology, while damage occurrence classes are represented in the legend. The release also improves handling of both legacy U and normalized Unknown confidence values.

Reproducibility and reuse. The repository is maintained on GitHub and archived by release in Zenodo. Researchers should cite the specific archived version used, retain the original field meanings and provenance, and report any filtering, reclassification, geocoding, aggregation, or uncertainty-treatment decisions applied in derived analyses. Contributions, corrections, and source-based amendments are welcome through the project repository.

Preliminary website at: https://zoharmot2.github.io/earthquake-db/