Jean Vogt 1929–2005: His Life as a Seismologist, Geologist, Geographer, and Historian - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 7

1975 to 2005 he published an additional number of more than 450 notes on a large
range of subjects, such as historical soil erosion, rotation of crops, tenure, farming,
cattle trade, rural life, and social conflicts.

5 The Seismo-Tectonic Project 1975-1984

During the years preceding 1975, Jean Vogt developed interest into the field of
geological hazard, as he developed with Pierre Vincent the project of a database
of landslides and related hazard. In 1975 the concern about safety of the French
nuclear industry gave birth to the French Seismo-Tectonic Mapping Project ( Projet
de la Carte Sismotectonique de la France ). The Projet was a joint operation of the
French electricity company EDF, 5 the French atomic energy commission CEA, 6 and
the BRGM, and was primarily destined to evaluate the seismic risk in the vicinity
of nuclear power plants. Jean Vogt was promoted as director of the programme.
As a first step, a pilot study was performed in Provence (Southeastern France). The
BRGM was in charge of the project and contracted with Professor Jean Pierre Rothe,
the former director of IPGS. 7 Jean Pierre Rothe and even more his father Edmond,
founder of IPGS in 1919, had developed a seismic catalogue of France including a
historical earthquake database and the macroseismic enquiries of the BCSF 8 con-
ducted since 1921. Rothe was asked to provide a catalogue for each departement , 9
first of Provence, and in 1976-77 for the rest of France.
Vogt found out that the fichier Rothe (the Rothe file) for historical earthquakes
was based much too exclusively on the 19th century Perrey's catalogues without
further analysis of the original sources. Based on his rich expertise on archives, he
realized quickly that an extensive search of sources was necessary. In few years, he
and a small number of highly competent collaborators, in particular Bernard Cadiot
and Jean Delaunay, performed a huge gleaning of original and new sources. All
major French archive depositories (one per departement ) and libraries were vis-
ited in the years 1976-77, a quite remarkable achievement in such a short time.
Scrutiny of thousands of archive documents, periodicals and newspapers led to a
completely renewed knowledge of the historical earthquakes in France. They set
up the foundations of the new historical earthquake database, which later gave
birth to the Sirene database, a subset of which is now available on Internet (Sis-
France 2008). The relations between Vogt and Rothe became quickly difficult and
ended into a breaking off. The countless new documents accumulated in the course
of the Projet were stored in hundreds of boxes into Jean Vogt's so called ar-
moire normande (actually Alsatian) in his Orleans office. The main results of the

5

Electricite de France .

6

Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique .

7

Institut de Physique du Globe de Strasbourg .

8

Bureau Central Sismologique Fran¸ais , IPGS, Strasbourg.

9

France is divided into 96 departements .