Coordinated and Interoperable Seismological Data and Product Services in Europe: the EPOS Thematic Core Service for Seismology

Abstract

In this article we describe EPOS Seismology, the Thematic Core Service consortium for the seismology domain within the European Plate Observing System infrastructure. EPOS Seismology was developed alongside the build-up of EPOS during the last decade, in close collaboration between the existing pan-European seismological initiatives ORFEUS (Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology), EMSC (Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center) and EFEHR (European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk) and their respective communities. It provides on one hand a governance framework that allows a well-coordinated interaction of the seismological community services with EPOS and its bodies, and on the other hand it strengthens the coordination among the already existing seismological initiatives with regard to data, products and service provisioning and further development. Within the EPOS Delivery Framework, ORFEUS, EMSC and EFEHR provide a wide range of services that allow open access to a vast amount of seismological data and products, following and implementing the FAIR principles and supporting open science. Services include access to raw seismic waveforms of thousands of stations together with relevant station and data quality information, parametric earthquake information of recent and historical earthquakes together with advanced event-specific products like moment tensors or source models and further ancillary services, and comprehensive seismic hazard and risk information, covering latest European scale models and their underlying data. The services continue to be available on the well-established domain-specific platforms and websites, and are also consecutively integrated with the interoperable central EPOS data infrastructure. EPOS Seismology and its participating organizations provide a consistent framework for the future development of these services and their operation as EPOS services, closely coordinated also with other international seismological initiatives, and is well set to represent the European seismological research infrastructures and their stakeholders within EPOS.