Seminar

Friday Seminar (Jan. 11th, 2019) by Assoc. Prof. Y. Kano (Earthquake Prediction Research Center)

Historical earthquake studies in Japan has long history since late 19th century or even earlier. The studies can be extended by utilizing preceding efforts to collect and analyze literatures and publication of sourcebooks and catalogues of historical earthquakes. Natural phenomena including earthquakes occurred in the past can be reconstructed based on the data transcribed from literatures. Reexamination and transcription of literatures still leads to improvement of the catalogue. Transcribed texts are analyzed by researchers from variety of research field e.g. seismology and history. Collaborative research over disciplines sometimes produces friction and requires considerable effort to understand each other. Data on historical earthquakes should be published following international standards. I will illustrate the tasks and prospects of historical earthquake studies as well as an online citizen science project “Minna de Honkoku” that produced full-text transcription of collections of ERI library, and a project “History X Earth and Planetary Science.”