Computerized seismic intensities of recently felt earthquakes in Israel

The traditional process of evaluating seismic intensities from questionnaires is laborious and very subjective. An attempt here is made to introduce computerized processing of questionnaires. This is made possible by modifying the questionnaire forms and developing a computer program that performs the evaluation in a rather objective manner. The prime assumption behind this procedure is that observed intensities in a certain location are normally distributed. This new approach has been tested successfully with recently obtained data on earthquakes in Israel, yielding evaluated intensities and isoseismal maps for earthquakes in the Jordan Valley (January 13, 1982), Lebanon (June 3, 1983), the Gulf of Suez (June 12, 1983), the Jezreel Valley (August 24, 1984), and near Jericho (January 25, 1985).