Italian strong motion database relative to the period 1972–2004: motivations and aims

Abstract

The Italian Accelerometic Archive (ITACA) was created in 2007 during a joint project between the Italian Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, INGV) and the Italian Civil Protection (Dipartimento della Protezione Civile, DPC). The project, started in 2006, had the aim of filling the data gap of existing strong motion databases and facilitating strong motion data users in obtaining good quality waveforms, through the collection, homogenization and distribution of strong motion data acquired during the period 1972-2004 in Italy by different institutions (Ente Nazionale per l'Energia Elettrica, ENEL, Italian electricity company; Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l'Energia e l'Ambiente, ENEA, Italian energy and environment organization DPC). The compiled database contains 2,182 three-component waveforms generated by 1,008 earthquakes with a maximum moment magnitude of 6.9 (1980 Irpinia earthquake) and can be accessed on-line at the portal denominated ITACA at the site http://itaca.mi.ingv.it, where a wide range of search tools enables the user to interactively retrieve events, recording stations and waveforms with particular characteristics, whose parameters can be specified, as needed, through user friendly interfaces. A range of display options allows users to view data in different contexts, extract and download time series and spectral data. This article describes the state of the art up to 2006 and the activities which led to the completion of the project.

Preface of special issue: A new generation of ground-motion models for Europe and the Middle East

“…Italian (Luzi et al, 2010) and Turkish (Akkar et al, 2010) strong-motion database projects, and international initiatives, e.g. the projects ISESD (Ambraseys et al, 2004a) and SHARE (Giardini et al, 2013) funded by the European Commission.…”

Overview of the Italian strong motion database ITACA 1.0

“…The basic steps of the whole ITACA processing procedure are illustrated in detail by Paolucci et al (2011) and Pacor et al (2011) and a summary of ITACA records and their distribution with magnitude and instrument type is listed in Table 2. (Luzi et al 2008(Luzi et al , 2010a, as listed in Table 3.…”

“…Although Italy has one of the richest and oldest strong-motion dataset in the world, the access to the Italian strong-motion data and correlated information was not so simple in the past, since information was archived in different data-banks (Luzi et al 2010a), with different standards and formats. This is the case of the ENEA strong-motion data collection, which ended in 1993, and of the European database, where the most recent Italian data pertain to the Umbria-Marche sequence of 1997-1998 (Ambraseys et al 2004).…”

“…The alpha-version of the Italian strong motion database (Luzi et al 2008(Luzi et al , 2010a,was implemented within Project S6 with the aim of: (i) setting up and testing the database structure; (ii) collecting strong motion data recorded up to 2004 from the National Accelerometric Network (RAN), formerly operated by the Italian Electric Company (ENEL) from 1972 to 1997 and subsequently by DPC; (iii) revising earthquakes, recording sites and instrument metadata; (iv) establishing procedures for data processing and calculation of strong motion parameters; (v) disseminate data through a web-portal.…”

“…List of sources, period covered, reference and code for the seismic catalogues used to compile the event parameters metadata in Itaca (afterLuzi et al 2010a) Catalogue…”