A ground-motion database for Israel with its corresponding point-source parameters, for engineering seismology applications

The seismic activity in Israel and its surrounding neighbors originates mainly from the active Dead Sea fault system. The historical and archeological records suggest a recurrence interval of approximately 10² and 10³ yr for earthquakes of M 6 and 7, respectively. Despite the existing hazard, local advancements on this topic have been slow and incremental, partly due to inherent challenges, such as the limited number of significant recorded earthquakes and a limited azimuthal coverage resulting from geopolitical constraints. Annual earthquake bulletins and an earthquake catalog have been published over the years by the Geophysical Institute of Israel, which operated the network until January 2020. In this article, we summarize a joint effort aimed at standardizing the catalog and creating the first of its kind, publicly available ground-motion database for Israel, which is open to the scientific and engineering communities. The database is composed of three main components: event database, ground-motion recording database, and site database. Once compiled, we use this database to derive and calibrate the source, path, and site parameters required to execute ground-motion simulations, namely, the regional stress drop, anelastic attenuation factor Q, geometrical spreading, and the near-surface high-frequency attenuation, kappa. The parameters are optimized to fit the measurement database, and once they do, a synthetic dataset can be simulated, which will compensate for the lack of measurements in the large-magnitude range.