We provide a database of the coseismic geological surface effects following the Mw 6.5 Norcia earthquake that hit central Italy on 30 October 2016. This was one of the strongest seismic events to occur in Europe in the past thirty years, causing complex surface ruptures over an area of >400 km2. The database originated from the collaboration of several European teams (Open EMERGEO Working Group; about 130 researchers) coordinated by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia. The observations were collected by performing detailed field surveys in the epicentral region in order to describe the geometry and kinematics of surface faulting, and subsequently of landslides and other secondary coseismic effects. The resulting database consists of homogeneous georeferenced records identifying 7323 observation points, each of which contains 18 numeric and string fields of relevant information. This database will impact future earthquake studies focused on modelling of the seismic processes in active extensional settings, updating probabilistic estimates of slip distribution, and assessing the hazard of surface faulting.

Terra Nova, 22, 43–51, 2010 Abstract An earthquake of Mw = 6.3 struck L’Aquila town (central Italy) on 6 April 2009 rupturing an ∼18‐km‐long SW‐dipping normal fault. The aftershock area extended for a length of more than 35 km and included major aftershocks on 7 and 9 April and thousands of minor events. Surface faulting occurred along the SW‐dipping Paganica fault with a continuous extent of ∼2.5 km. Ruptures consist of open cracks and vertical dislocations or warps (0.1m maximum throw) with an orientation of N130°–140°. Small triggered slip and shaking effects also took place along nearby synthetic and antithetic normal faults. The observed limited extent and small surface displacement of the Paganica ruptures with respect to the height of the fault scarps and vertical throws of palaeo‐earthquakes along faults in the area put the faulting associated with the L’Aquila earthquake in perspective with respect to the maximum expected magnitude and the regional seismic hazard.

No abstract

<p>The central Italy seismic sequence, started with the Mw = 6.0 Amatrice earthquake on August 24th 2016, is the first significant one after the Italian Seismic Bulletin (BSI) changed its analysis strategies in 2015. These new strategies consist on the release of the BSI every four months, the review of the events with ML ≥ 1.5 and the priority on the review of events with ML ≥ 3.5. Furthermore, in the last year we improved the bulletin tools and made possible the analysis of all the stations whose data are stored in the European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA). The new procedures and software utilities allowed, during the first month of 2016 emergency, to integrate, in the Bulletin, the temporary stations installed by the emergency group SISMIKO, both in real–time transmission and in stand-alone recording. In the early days of the sequence many of the BSI analysts were engaged in the monitoring room shifts, nevertheless at the end of August all events occurred in those days with ML ≥ 4 were analyzed; the largest event recovered and localized is a ML = 4.5 event immediately following the main shock. In September 2016, 83 events with ML ≥ 3.5 were analyzed and re-checked, the number of pickings greatly improved. The focal mechanism of the main shock was evaluated using first motion polarities, and compared with the available Time Domain Moment Tensors and Regional Centroid Moment Tensor. The first eight hours of the day on August 24th, the most critical for the INGV surveillance room, were carefully analyzed: the number of located events increased from 133 to 408. The magnitude of completeness, after the analysis of the BSI, has dropped significantly from about 3.5 to 2.7. The mainshock focal mechanism and the relative locations of the first 8 hours’ aftershocks give clues on the initial fault activation. The seismic sequence in November 2016 is still ongoing; it included a mainshock of Mw = 6.5 on October 30th and 3 events of magnitude greater than 5.0 one on August 24th and two on October 26th.</p>

[1] Nearby faults can interact, affecting the timing of a future earthquake. A large earthquake can alter the static stress surrounding faults, possibly activating an aftershock sequence. Here we test the hypothesis of earthquake triggering by examining the earthquakes that affected the Umbria-Marche region (central Italy) during September 1997 to April 1998. The analysis was performed combining information contained in parameters a and b of the Gutenberg-Richter relationship, before and after the strongest main shocks, using a catalog of 6211 earthquakes (M ! 1.5). By analyzing the changes in space of the a parameter, we found that Colfiorito main shocks (M w 5.7 and 6.0) on 26 September 1997 increased the seismicity rate within 40-50 km of the epicenter. We interpret this behavior as the effect of stress redistribution. After analyzing the b value changes in space and time we found the strongest increase in mean magnitude in the Sellano area, between the Colfiorito shocks and the two strong events (M w 5.2 and 5.6, respectively) which hit this region on 12 and 14 October 1997. This area was also the location of the strongest increase in change of the local occurrence rate density. On the basis of these observations, we postulate that temporal variations in both a and b values indicate a probable causal connection between the largest earthquakes in the sequence.