Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center

The Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center (EMSC) was established 20 years ago with the goal of providing the community with rapid information about large earthquakes in the European-Mediterranean region. This activity has undergone major upgrades over the past three years thanks to an EC contract for the 'Rapid Warning System for Earthquakes in the European-Mediterranean Region'. Another task of EMSC was to act as the collection and archiving center for parametric data in the European-Mediterranean region. This service has been operational for many years and is well-known in the scientific community. For several years, the EMSC issued manually a seismic bulletin including all information available at the EMSC. Because of the shortage of human resources, the service has been discontinued. The EMSC has investigated to possibility to provide an automatic bulletin, and has recently contributed to the development of a data fusion software. With now 41 seismological laboratories as members, the EMSC has developed the secretarial and the administrative structure for dealing with a large number of institutes. Its key position in the research community has allowed the EMSC to coordinate actions in an international environment.