50 Years of the ISC Service to Seismology
S02: IUGG, Prague, Czech Republic, 27 June 2015.
Conveners: Storchak, D.A., Myers, S.C., Assumpcao, M., Morelli, A., Delouis, B
The International Seismological Centre (ISC) was formed in 1964 as an international, non-governmental and non-profit organization. The first objective was to continue the International Seismological Summary’s mission, which entailed collecting seismogram readings made by local, regional and global seismic networks and providing the definitive bulletin of global seismicity. Demand for the ISC Bulletin and the scope of ISC services grew over the years. In addition to the Bulletin, the ISC now manages the International Seismographic Station Registry jointly with NEIC, the IASPEI Reference Event List (GT), the EHB Bulletin, the ISC Event Bibliography, the ISC-GEM Global Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue and the International Seismological Contacts Service. In line with demand, the number of member-institutions supporting the ISC has grown to 62 and the number networks contributing data is now 130 with 6500 stations in all. The ISC is also working to extend and upgrade its services by experimenting with its own waveform measurements. Each year ISC data are used in several hundred peer-reviewed scientific articles in many fields of geosciences, including studies of inner structure of the Earth, tectonics, seismicity, assessment of seismic hazard and risk, and monitoring the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
This session invites contributions that celebrate the use of ISC data in all fields of the geosciences. We also invite suggestions for new services and functions that the ISC and other parametric data centres could provide to the seismological community. These suggestions could include additional seismogram and earthquake source parameters for inclusion in the ISC Bulletin, as well as new types of data, such as felt information, tsunami related information, and web links to strong-motion, GPS, infrasound and INSAR data.
