Seismic Surveillance and Earthquake Monitoring in Italy

Abstract

The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) is an Italian research institution with focus on earth sciences. Moreover, the INGV is the operational center for seismic surveillance and earthquake monitoring in Italy and is a part of the civil protection system as a center of expertise on seismic, volcanic, and tsunami risks.INGV operates the Italian National Seismic Network and other networks at national scale and is a primary node of the European Integrated Data Archive for archiving and distributing strong-motion and weak-motion seismic recordings. In the control room in Rome, INGV staff performs seismic surveillance and tsunami warning services; in Catania and Naples, the control rooms are devoted to volcanic surveillance. Volcano monitoring includes locating earthquakes in the regions around the Sicilian (Etna, Eolian Islands, and Pantelleria) and the Campanian (Vesuvius, Campi Fregrei, and Ischia) active volcanoes. The tsunami warning is based on earthquake location and magnitude (M) evaluation for moderate to large events in the Mediterranean region and also around the world. The technologists of the institute tuned the data acquisition system to accomplish, in near real time, automatic earthquake detection, hypocenter and magnitude determination, and evaluation of several seismological products (e.g., moment tensors and ShakeMaps). Database archiving of all parametric results is closely linked to the existing procedures of the INGV seismic surveillance environment and surveillance procedures. Earthquake information is routinely revised by the analysts of the Italian seismic bulletin. INGV provides earthquake information to the Department of Civil Protection (Dipartimento di Protezione Civile) to the scientific community and to the public through the web and social media. We aim at illustrating different aspects of earthquake monitoring at INGV: (1) network operations; (2) organizational structure and the hardware and software used; and (3) communication, including recent developments and planned improvements.

An updated view of the Italian seismicity from probabilistic location in 3D velocity models: The 1981–2018 Italian catalog of absolute earthquake locations (CLASS)

“…Though with a sparse distribution from 1995 to 2005, and some temporal fluctuations when data from regional networks were not available, the continuity in time of the CB seismicity is confirmed by the impressive event increase from 2012 to 2018, well imaged in the spacetime plot, and corresponding to the introduction of the new INGV acquisition system (Margheriti et al, 2021). The image of the CB seismicity remains clearly delimited in the area from Campotosto (CBS southern limit in Fig.…”

Peak Frequency Changes From HV Spectral Ratios in Central Italy: Effects of Strong Motions and Seasonality Over 12 Years of Observations

“…The two stations (AQU and NRCA) belong to Italian permanent network (hereinafter RSN;INGV Seismological Data Centre, 2006;Margheriti et al, 2021) operated by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). Their data were downloaded from the European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA, https://eida.ingv.it last accessed in April 2022; Strollo et al, 2021).…”

“…Despite these encouraging scientific papers, a comprehensive study that uses the ambient seismic noise continuously recorded by permanent seismic stations to monitor the variations of the H/V spectral ratios at the occurrence of strong earthquakes is still missing. The aim of this study is to investigate the temporal variability of H/V results in Italy, taking advantage of 12-year-long continuous data recorded by two seismic stations of the Italian permanent network (Rete Sismica Nazionale, hereinafter RSN;INGV Seismological Data Centre, 2006, andMargheriti et al, 2021) run by Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). The two seismic stations are deployed in the Central Apennines area that between 2008 and 2020 was affected by several strong earthquakes, in particular the L'Aquila earthquake of 2009 and the Central Italy (Amatrice, Visso, Norcia, 2016) sequences.…”

Public earthquake communication in Italy through a multi-source social media platform: The INGVterremoti experience (2010–2022)

“…The INGVterremoti account on Twitter started its activity in March 2010 to provide constant and timely messages about seismic events localized by the seismologists working at the INGV-Rome Control Room which provides seismic surveillance and tsunami alert services (Amato et al, 2021;Margheriti et al, 2021): earthquakes in Italy with magnitude equal to or greater than 2.5 (M2.5+), in the Euro-Mediterranean area with magnitude equal to or larger than 5.0 (M5.0+) and in the world (M6.0+). Most of the tweets are basic data on ongoing seismicity (events' location, origin time, magnitude, affected areas), but in the last few years more general information has also been published, including links to articles published on the INGVterremoti blog-magazine, etc.…”