Made on Apr. 15, 1999, 10th Revision, Feb. 22, 2002

Catalog of Damaging Earthquakes in the World (Through 2001)

Tokuji Utsu

The 2002 edition of WEQ.dbf (1053kB) contains the Catalog of "Damaging Earthquakes in the World (Through 2001)." In the 2002 edition, 50 earthquakes in 2001 have been added, and some of the earthquakes edited before 2001 have been revised. Made by dBASE for windows as with the previous editions, the 2002 edition allows searching and processing using dBASE for windows besides being exportable to other database software programs including all versions of Microsoft ACCESS.

WEQ.dbf is difficult to use because its file is prefixed by data for dBASE without a linefeed symbol. To make up for this shortcoming, WEQ.text (1073kB) (with linefeed) was made by converting WEQ.dbf. The text file is suitable for printing tables and developing search programs. WEQ.dbf was also converted to make WEQ.mdb (1732kB) usable with ACCESS 2000.
Both WEQ.dbf and WEQ.text are made up of the following columns (fields). The figures in the parentheses indicate the width of a field (in half size characters or figures). Please refer to the description in the postscript for further details.

SQ(1):Leave blank, ?, +, or -
REF(4):Class symbol of information source
YR(5):Year (integer)
MD(4):Month, day (integer; 0 for an unidentified month, and 00 for an unidentified day):Enter - in the unidentified part for printing.
HM(4):Time of occurrence (integer, 0 is for an unidentified time of occurrence, -1 is for twelve midnight: Enter - for an unidentified time of occurrence and 00 for -1 for printing.
UL(1):U (universal time) or L (local time)
LAT(6):Latitude of epicenter (real value, down to the second decimal place)
LONG(7):Longitude of epicenter (real value, down to the second decimal place)
DEP(3):Depth of centrum (in kilometers, character data), or a symbol such as vs. s, i d or n.
MAG(3):Magnitude (in real value, down to the first decimal place)
T(1):T for an earthquake accompanied by a tidal wave(t for a small tidal wave that was recorded by marigraph but did not cause damage)
DEAD(6):Number of fatalities (integer)
INJURED(6):Number of casualties (integer)
The minus figures in the DEAD and INJURED column indicate the following:-1: few, -2: several, -3: some, -4: many, -5: great, -6: 100s (several hundred), -7: 1,000s (several thousand), -8: 10,000s (several tens of thousand), and -9: - (unknown). Expressions after the colon should replace the minus figures for printing.
DAM(4):Degree of damage
REMARKS(49):Name of earthquake-hit country, geographic name, number of fatalities reported by other sources, Ms, Mw. and others
Field for dBasedBase(1):Leave blank