Harmonization of the Seismic Hazard Maps of the Western Balkan Region Project Earthquake Catalogue and Strong Ground Motion Database

The Harmonization of Seismic Hazard Maps in the Western Balkan Countries Project (BSHAP) was funded for 7 years by NATO-Science for Peace Program to support the preparation of new seismic hazard maps of the Western Balkan Region using modern scientific tools. One of the most important outputs of the BSHAP is an updated and unified BSHAP earthquake catalogue that is compiled directly from the datasets of earthquake data providers of the region. The BSHAP earthquakee catalogue describedd here covers the geographic area limited by N, E and includes 26,118 earthquakes that occurred in the region between 510 BC and Details of data compilation efforts including the removal of duplicate events, unificationn of the magnitude scales, declustering of the catalogue and completeness analysis are presented in Markusic et al. (2015). New magnitude conversion equations for various local magnitude scales of the data providers are developed with the aim of having homogeneous moment magnitude estimates. Completeness time intervals for the catalogue data are provided as inputs to the seismic source models used to obtain updatedd seismic hazard of Western Balkan Region. The unified and updated BSHAP catalogue is found to be compatible with the current wellanalysis established European and world-wide catalogues and represents a sound basis for of the seismicity of this region. In the framework of both BSHAP-1 (Akkar et al. 2011) and BSHAP-2 (Gulerce et al. 2015) regional projects, strengthening of the regional free field strong motion network capacity and harmonization of strong motion data base, among others, were one of the primary project goals and achievements. Harmonized strong motion data base has established a solid base for proper selection of ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment by comparing the compiled strong ground motion dataa with the available global, European, Euro-Med, and regional ground motion prediction models. BSHAP partner countries encourages the use of collected free field strong ground motion database for the end users and international earthquake research communities by realizing improved multi- lateral data exchange protocols and publishing the major project findings