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Short History of FITESC

FITESC is the acronym for the Field Investigation Team of the ESC (Musson et al, 2001). It is not a new idea to form an international team, which would collect, and later evaluate, macroseismic data for strong and damaging earthquakes in Europe and the Mediterranean. But after recent events in the 1990s (such as Southern Croatia, 1996, Central Italy, 1997, NW Slovenia, 1998, and especially Turkey and Greece, 1999, and Algeria and Greece, 2003 ), the absence of such a team was keenly felt, and discussions of this subject were re-opened.

It was obvious that the seismological community currently lacks the mechanism for creating such a team. But if such an activity could be promoted, it would be possible to have a public homogeneous database of earthquake effect data, a valuable resource for many studies. Having such a team would also make an important improvement to the present level of co-operation and exchange of information in the Euro-Mediterranean region. At the General Assembly of the ESC in Lisbon, Portugal in 2000 a resolution was endorsed, in which an interest in creating such a team was expressed. A Preliminary Committee was formed, with aim to explore the possibilities of making this idea a reality. The feasibility study was presented at the ESC General Assembly in Genoa, Italy in September 2002.As expected, ESC recognised the results and endorsed FITESC as a first official international seismological team in the history of Europe. A new Sub-Commission was formed in order to explore the possibilities to make such a team operational in the near future.