The impact of the earthquake activity in Western Europe from the historical and architectural heritage records - Intraplate Earthquakes - page 199

Figure 8.1 Seismic activity in the region extending from the Lower Rhine Embayment to southern
North Sea from 1350 to 2012.
low Q-factor that suppresses the high-frequency content of the seismic source,
and (or) a thickness corresponding to a soil fundamental period that enhances
ground motion in the frequency range of the large building natural resonance
frequency.
8.1 Introduction
The damage caused by past earthquakes is an important source of information about the
seismic vulnerability of a region and its study may be very helpful to validate seismic
risk studies. Unfortunately, the available data on the impact of destructive earthquakes in
plate interior regions, such as the tectonically stable Europe, are often imprecise, because
strong earthquakes are rare and only few of them have occurred since the developments of
modern seismology.
The area of Western Europe extending from the Lower Rhine Embayment to the
southern North Sea ( Figure 8.1 ) is characterized by a moderate seismic activity, with the
occurrence of 14 earthquakes with estimated magnitude greater than or equal to 5.0 since
the fourteenth century (Camelbeeck et al ., 2007 ) . The most important of these earthquakes
occurred on 18 September 1692, in the northern part of the Belgian Ardenne. Its magnitude