A. Tertulliani

National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology | INGV

The concept of macroseismic intensity arose with the purpose of measuring the strength of an earthquake by the effects it causes on buildings, people, and domestic furnishings. From this perspective, buildings can be considered seismic sensors that record the shaking. Early scales were conceived at a time when buildings were mainly in masonry and t...

Historical seismology retrieves information about the effects of earthquakes that occurred in the past, mostly regarding the damage, but also on environmental effects. In this paper, we describe the methodology of our research on earthquake-induced hydrological effects, which have been long observed and documented, and are among the most outstandin...

The macroseismic source parameters of earthquakes occurring within a sequence are strongly influenced by cumulative damage effects. When we deal with historical seismic sequences, in addition to the cumulative intensities, other intrinsic uncertainties due to the scarcity and indeterminacy of sources come into play. These issues imply that the para...

An accurate survey of old and new datasets allowed us to probe the nature and role of fluids in the seismogenic processes of the Apennines mountain range in Italy. New datasets include the 1985–2021 instrumented seismicity catalog, the computed seismogenic thickness, and geodetic velocities and strains, whereas data from the literature comprise foc...

Rome has the world's longest historical record of felt earthquakes, with more than 100 events during the last 2600 years. However, no destructive earthquake has been reported in the sources, and all of the greatest damage suffered in the past has been attributed to far-field events. While this fact suggests that a moderate seismotectonic regime cha...

Digital macroseismic field data: a real time data map. Soon after a seismic event, above the damage threshold, personnel of INGV is involved in emergency. Each group has the task of collecting data, by making measurements and surveys, to study the earthquake from different points of view. In this context the field activities of the QUEST group (QU...

Rome has the world’s longest historical record of felt earthquakes, with more than 100 events during the last 2,600 years. However, no destructive earthquake has been reported in the sources and all of the greatest damage suffered in the past has been attributed to far-field events. While this fact suggests that a moderate seismotectonic regime cha...

DInSAR data provide a powerful tool to recognize the Earth's surface where the permanent deformation is concentrated and undergo the strongest ground motion during an earthquake, i.e., defining the epicentral area. We analyzed three recent seismic events in the Apennines belt in Italy related to extensional and contractional earthquakes and documen...

Earthquakes, large or even moderate, are often followed by secondary phenomena, such as landslides, tsunamis, fires and technological disasters, leading to cascading effects that may, in turn, cause severe repercussions. Before, during and after the occurrence of these events, risk communication, currently evolved to codified legislation, is a cruc...

The 6 February 1971 Tuscania (central Italy) earthquake belongs to a peculiar family of destructive seismic events that have occurred in an area classified as low-seismic hazard, causing heavy damage and tens of casualties. However, this earthquake took place at the dawn of modern seismology in Italy and is far from being fully characterized from a...

This multi-disciplinary work provides an updated assessment of possible future eruptive scenarios for the city of Rome. Seven new ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ages from selected products of the Monti Sabatini and Vulsini volcanic districts, along with a compilation of all the literature ages on the Colli Albani and Vico products, are used to reconstruct and compare t...

The 1703 Mw 6.7 seismic sequence (I0 11 Mercalli–Cancani–Sieberg scale) was one of the most important crises ever occurred in Italy and has left a deep mark on the seismic history of cities and towns of central Italy. Abundant documents testify the damage suffered by the city of Rome during this sequence; however, the descriptions are mainly referr...

In 1968, six earthquakes with magnitude between 5.1 and 6.4 destroyed or heavily damaged several towns in the Valle del Belìce(western Sicily), causing some three hundred fatalities. There have been some critical issues in the intensity assessment however in the macroseismic studies produced over the years , since the MCS scale was used as an estim...

On 24th of August 2016 a strong earthquake (Ml 6.0; Mw 6.0) struck Central Italy, causing destruction and about 300 victims. The earthquake was the first in a long-lasting seismic sequence characterized by seven events of magnitude larger than 5.4, with the main event of Mw 6.5 occurring on 30th of October 2016. A macroseismic survey was carried ou...

In this paper we describe the macroseismic effects produced by the long and destructive seismic sequence that hit Central Italy from 24 August 2016 to January 2017. Starting from the procedure adopted in the complex field survey, we discuss the characteristics of the building stock and its classification in terms of EMS-98 as well as the issues ass...

The aim of this paper is to propose the creation, in terms of European Macroseismic Scale (EMS-98), of the entire macroseismic field of the 6 May 1976 Friuli earthquake. Only forty odd years have passed, and nothwithstanding that there is a huge quantity of existing data, it was still disturbing to find that much of the original data are missing an...

The seismological community acknowledges the essential contribution of macroseismic assessment to the compilation of the seismic catalogues used for seismic hazard assessment. Furthermore, macroseismic observations are routinely employed by Civil Protection authorities in the aftermath of damaging events to improve their decision making capacity....

The powerful M 7.1 earthquake that devastated the Fucino Basin (Central Italy) in 1915 results to be the only (except for a M 5.7 event in 1904) remarkable event to have occurred in that area, according to the 900‐year‐long record of the Italian Seismic Catalogue. Curiously, the 1915 event occurred only 38 years after the complete man‐induced dewat...

The 2016 August 24th, Mw6.0 Amatrice (Central Italy) normal faulting earthquake produced a remarkable number of Earthquake-Rotated Objects (EROs) that affected chimneys, as well as pillars and capitals on gates and walls. In this paper we present the EROs dataset, and perform some qualitative analyses to evaluate if specific geological and seismolo...

The aim of this paper is to provide a complete and reliable macroseismic knowledge of the events that stroke a large area in Central Italy on 7 and 11 May 1984. Previous studies, together with original accounts integrated with new and unpublished information, have been gathered and examined in order to re-evaluate macroseismic intensities in terms...

Though the Calabrian arc is the most seismic area of the Italian peninsula, the overwhelming majority of M >6.5 earthquakes have occurred during the last four centuries. Conversely, the Italian seismic catalog exhibits an almost total absence of earthquakes—even moderate‐magnitude earthquakes—between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries. The reason...

40 let po nizu močnih potresov, ki so zahtevali skoraj 1000 življenj in razrušili mesta in vasi v Furlaniji (severna Italija) in sosednjih področjih, ugotavljamo, da ne obstaja enotna čezmejna karta s prikazom potresnih učinkov. Odločili smo se ponovno oceniti vse obstoječe in dosegljive podatke, tokrat s pomočjo EMS-98 lestvice. Čeprav štiri deset...

Nella Struttura Terremoti dell’INGV la Linea di Attività T5 “Sorveglianza sismica ed operatività post- terremoto” si occupa delle attività di sviluppo di strumenti e procedure per la valutazione in tempo reale degli effetti di terremoti e tsunami e della gestione delle emergenze sismiche. Uno dei suoi obiettivi del 2015 era la formalizzazione dei p...

The 24 August 2016 earthquake very heavily struck the central sector of the Apennines among the Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Abruzzi regions, devastating the town of Amatrice, the nearby villages and other localities along the Tronto valley. In this paper we present the results of the macroseismic field survey carried out using the European Macroseism...

In the framework of INGV Earthquake Department organization, the Research Activity named "Sorveglianza sismica ed operatività post-terremoto" (Seismic survey and post-earthquake operativity" (T5) takes care of the development of tools and procedures for the real time evaluation of earthquake effects and the management of seismic emergency. One of m...

Forty years after a devastating earthquake sequence, that has demanded almost 1000 lives and destroyed towns and villages in Friuli and adjacent regions, we have decided to take another look at the macroseismic data using the EMS-98 scale. Although four decades are not, historically speaking, a long period, and the quantity of existing data can be...

Forty years after a devastating earthquake sequence, that has demanded almost 1000 lives and destroyed towns and villages in Friuli (Northern Italy) and adjacent regions, a thorough interstate macroseismic field does not exist. We have then decided to take another look at the macroseismic data using the EMS-98 scale. Although four decades are not,...

In their study of the Nepal earthquake of 25 April 2015, Martin et al. (2015) build a large European Macroseismic Scale (EMS‐98) intensity dataset, from which they infer some results in terms of attenuation laws and reconsideration of historical earthquakes. In this article we would like to draw attention to how the EMS‐98 practice, as established...

L’ultima versione del Database Macrosismico Italiano chiamata DBMI15 è stata rilasciata a luglio 2016 e aggiorna e sostituisce la precedente, DBMI11 (Locati et al., 2011). DBMI fornisce un set di dati di intensità macrosismica relativo ai terremoti italiani nella finestra temporale 1000-2014. I dati provengono da studi di autori ed enti diversi, si...

The latest version of the Italian Macroseismic Database, DBMI15, has been released in July 2016, and replaces the prevision version, called DBMI11 (Locati et al., 2011). DBMI makes available a set of macroseismic intensity data related to Italian earthquakes and covers the time-window 1000-2014. Intensity data derive from studies by authors from va...

This 2 days-long field trip aims at exploring field evidence of active tectonics, paleoseismology and Quaternary geology in the Fucino and L’Aquila intermountain basins and adjacent areas, within the inner sector of Central Apennines, characterized by extensional tectonics since at least 3 Ma. Each basin is the result of repeated strong earthquakes...

We present the first world catalog of earthquake-rotated objects (EROs). The catalog is composed of 2053 EROs originating during 184 earthquakes that occurred between 1349 and 2014. The catalog is organized into two tables that contain information about the source earthquakes and about the observed EROs, respectively. EROs are observed to occur fol...

The article presents the results of the quantitative statistical analyses of the first world catalog of earthquake-rotated objects (EROs), presented in Part I of the study (Cucci et al., 2016). We searched for possible relations between the epicentral distance of EROs occurrence and a number of customary seismological observables, such as magnitude...

The M ~ 7 1915 Fucino (Central Italy) earthquake represents one of the most destructive seismic events ever occurred in the Italian Peninsula. Several seismogenic faults have been proposed in the past decades as the source of the earthquake by means of different approaches and techniques that lead to a variety of speculations about the source mecha...

The Italian seismic catalog (Rovida et al. , 2011) portrays a significant gap of seismicity in the Pollino Range area, the southernmost segment of the southern Apennines at the boundary with the Calabrian arc. In this region, the only significant seismic event of the instrumental era occurred in 1998 north of the Pollino Range ( M w 5.6, Fig. 1). N...

In May-June 2012, the Po Valley (Northern Italy) was struck by an earthquake sequence whose strongest event occurred on 20 May (Mw 5.9). The intensity values (Imax 7-8 EMS98) assessed through macroseismic field surveys seemed inappropriate to describe the whole range of effects observed, especially those to monumental heritage, which suffered very...

This paper describes in detail the stages of an historical seismology research of the 1693 Pollino earthquake, that was recently revised within the Project DPC-INGV S1 "Base-knowledge improvement for assessing the seismogenic potential of Italy". The aim of this paper is to document as fully and as clearly as possible all the successive steps of th...

The earthquake of October 3, 1943, is an important event for characterization of hazard in central Italy, but none of the earlier studies provide an exhaustive description of its effects. The context in which the earthquake occurred was very complex and many relevant records were not available for consultation when the studies were made. This study...

Nell’ambito delle commemorazioni per i 50 anni dalla frana del Vajont, il Dipartimento della Protezione Civile (DPC), la Regione Veneto e la Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia con il coinvolgimento delle Province Autonome di Trento e Bolzano, hanno organizzato un’esercitazione sul rischio sismico denominata “Nord-Est 2013” svoltasi dal 13 al 15...

Earthquake‐rotated objects (EROs) have been observed and described for centuries (e.g., Hoffmann, 1838; Mallet, 1862; Reid, 1910). Several theories about the rotating mechanisms have been developed. Kozak (2006) classified rotating effects as those caused by a deviation between the projection of the center of gravity into the contact plane and the...

Online Material: Table of the EROs observed following the 2012 seismic events. In the past few years, the awareness that earthquake‐induced rotational effects can be significant in the near‐fault region of an earthquake, and the consequent implications in seismic engineering, has gained rotational seismology a strong recovery in the attention of t...

On November 24, 2004 an earthquake (M-w = 5.0) struck the west side of Lake Garda (northern Italy), producing moderate but widespread damage. It provided the opportunity of reviewing the seismicity of all the area over the past two centuries, whose former most significant event is the October 30, 1901 earthquake (M-w = 5.5), while other minor but d...

The effort for reducing the uncertainties in the location and size of historical earthquakes, even moderate‐size ones, is not a peripheral issue, as it plays a major role in the distribution of earthquake recurrence times that can affect the maps of seismic hazard of a territory. The L’Aquila area (Abruzzo, Central Italy) struck by the 6 April 2009...

The 6 April 2009 M-w 6.3 earthquake (I-max = 9-10, Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg [MCS]) struck the Abruzzi region of central Italy, producing severe damage in the city of L'Aquila. There was heavy damage in the city, especially in the central city area where unusual features of the damage pattern were immediately evident. The aim of this study is to cor...

On May 20, 2012, at 4:03 local time (2:03 UTC), a large part of the Po Valley between the cities of Ferrara, Modena and Mantova was struck by a damaging earthquake (Ml 5.9). The epicenter was located by the Istituto Nazionale di Geo-fisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) seismic network [ISIDe 2010] at 44.889 ˚N and 11.228 ˚E, approximately 30 km west of Fer...

La prima versione disponibile al pubblico del Database Macrosismico Italiano risale al maggio 2007 (DBMI04; Stucchi et al., 2007). Esso conteneva i dati di intensità utilizzati per la compilazione dei parametri del catalogo parametrico rilasciato nel maggio 2004 (CPTI04; Gruppo di Lavoro CPTI, 2004)), a sua volta utilizzato per la compilazione dell...

The Educational & Outreach Group (E&O Group) of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) designed a portable museum to bring on the road educational activities focused on seismology, seismic hazard and Earth science. This project was developed for the first edition of the Science Festival organized in Genoa, Italy, in 2003. The mus...

The 2009 M-w 6.3 L'Aquila earthquake produced an impressive number of rotational effects on vertically organized objects such as chimneys, pillars, capitals, and gravestones. We present a dataset of such effects that consists of 105 observations at 37 different sites and represents a compendium of earthquake-induced instances of rotational effects...

On November 24, 2004 a strong earthquake (Ml 5.2), followed by a small seismic sequence, hit the western side of Lake Garda area, producing moderate but widespread damage in the main locality of the area (Salò) and more serious damage in some small villages of the Val Sabbia (Clibbio, Pompegnino). The macroseismic study of the 2004 earthquake has b...

This paper describes the damage survey in the city of L’Aquila after the 6 April 2009 earthquake. The earthquake, whose magnitude and intensity reached Mw=6.3 and Imax=9–10 MCS, struck the Abruzzi region of Central Italy producing severe damage in L’Aquila and in many villages along the Middle Aterno River valley. After the event, a building-to-bui...

The M-w 6.3 2009 L'Aquila (central Italy) earthquake produced more than one hundred rotational effects on chimneys, pillars, capitals and gravestones. In this paper we focus on the 37 objects that can be more reliably considered as representative of pure rotational ground motion, and find a relation between the distribution of the observed rotation...

Terra Nova, 22, 378–389, 2010 The elevation of the Capo Vaticano coastal terraces (Tyrrhenian coast, central Calabria) is the result of a combination of regional uplift and repeated coseismic displacement. We subtract the regional uplift from the total uplift (maximum average uplift rates: 0.81–0.97 mm a−1 since c. 0.7 Ma) and obtain the residual f...

This paper shows the results of the macroseismic survey of the December 15, 2009 earthquake, performed according to the EuropeanMacroseismic Scale 1998. The event (Ml 4.2), hit the Tiber Valley, between the Terni and Perugia provinces has been evaluated of intensity 7. As the EMS98 is not yet systematically used for Italian earthquakes, we tested i...

This article has been originated by thoughts on previous analyses related to the proba- bilistic treatment of the macroseismic attenuation, from which it turns out that in Italian territory the intensity decay I varies greatly from one region to another, depending on many factors, some of them not easily measurable. By applying a clustering algorit...

The seismic sequence of the Umbria-Marche Apennines was a dramatic moment for the population involved; at the same time, it provided a unique occasion for the Italian scientific community and for the national civil protection to assess their respective abilities in understanding and managing the event. Furthermore, macroseismology (including histor...

On April 6, 2009, at 01:33 GMT, central Italy has been hit by a strong earthquake (Ml 5.8, Mw 6.3) representing the mainshock of a seismic sequence of over 20.000 aftershocks recorded in about five months. The event, located in the inner of the Abruzzi region just a few kilometres SW of the town of L'Aquila, has produced destructions and heavy dama...

On April 6th 2009 a Mw=6.3, Imax=9-10 earthquake struck the Abruzzi region of Central Italy (http://portale.ingv.it/highlights/view?set_language=en). We find similarities in some peculiar characteristics of the 2009 sequence and of some historical events occurred in the area, in particular in 1461 and 1762. We observe strong analogies in the distri...

The 8 September 1905 Calabria (Southern Italy) earthquake belongs to a peculiar family of highly destructive (I0=XI) seismic events, occurred at the dawning of the instrumental seismology, for which the location, geometry and size of the causative source are still substantially unconstrained. During the century elapsed since the earthquake, previou...

RIASSUNTO: Galli P. et al., Il terremoto aquilano del 6 aprile 2009: rilievo macrosismico, effetti di superficie ed implicazioni sismotetto-niche. (IT ISSN 0394-3356, 2009). Viene dato ragguaglio sulle operazioni di rilievo macrosismico relative al terremoto aquilano del 6 Aprile 2009 (Mw=6.3; Io=IX MCS) condotte dal QUEST e del risultato conseguit...

This paper presents an overview of the activities performed during the macroseismic field survey of the earthquake that occurred in the Parma and Reggio Emilia region on December 23, 2008. The mainshock (Ml=5.2), was located south of the city of Parma and was resolutely felt through Northern Italy. The report here presented shows the procedures car...

At 5:20 a.m., on 28th December 1908, one of the most catastrophic earthquakes in history occurred in the Messina Straits. Southern Calabria and north-eastern Sicily were severely hit: in few seconds Messina, Reggio Calabria and numerous villages on both sides of the Straits were devastated. Shortly after the earthquake a tsunami followed. Waves up...

Italy is a country well known for the seismic and volcanic hazard. However, a similarly great hazard, although not well recognized, is posed by the occurrence of tsunami waves along the Italian coastline. This is testified by a rich catalogue and by field evidence of deposits left over by pre- and historical tsunamis, even in places today considere...

The Educational & Outreach Group (EOG) of the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica & Vulcanologia created a portable museum to provide educational opportunities in volcanology, volcanic risk and Earth science for students and vis-itors. The EOG developed this project for the "Festival della Scienza", organized in Genoa, Italy, in October -Novem-ber, 200...

In the night of April 6, 2009, a frightful earthquake (Mw=6.3) struck the L'Aquila region (central Apennines, Italy), awaking also million of citizens in the 100-km-far city of Rome. In the epicentral region the death toll reached 308, most in the town of L'Aquila. In only 90 minutes, the first experts of the Quick Earthquake Survey Team (QUEST) st...

The September 8, 1905 Calabria (Southern Italy) earthquake belongs to a peculiar family of highly destructive seismic events, mostly occurred at the dawning of the instrumental seismology, for which location, geometry and size of the source are still substantially unconstrained. For instance, during the century-long period elapsed since the earthqu...

Durante la seconda guerra mondiale un tratto della catena appenninica al confine tra Marche, Umbria e Lazio fu interessato da alcuni terremoti moderatamente dannosi, di cui non si trova quasi traccia nei cataloghi parametrici correnti. Il terremoto del 19 dicembre 1941, ben attestato da fonti storiche, non è stato mai registrato da alcun catalogo s...

Nel 2007 gli autori hanno avviato un nuovo studio del forte terremoto avvenuto il 3 ottobre 1943 nell’Ascolano. Alcuni risultati preliminari dello studio furono presentati all’ultimo convegno del GNGTS, sotto il titolo Terremoti dimenticati o poco noti delle Marche meridionali: primi risultati di uno studio della finestra cronologica 1941-1943 (Ter...

During World War II four moderately damaging earthquakes occurred in a portion of the Apennines crossed by the regional borders of Latium, Umbria and the Marches. The current parametric earthquake catalogues fail almost completely to record them. The earthquake of December 19, 1941 is well attested by historical sources but no Italian parametric ea...

This paper describes the variation of the human perception of earthquakes under the peculiar condition of seismic sequence occurrence. To this aim, we chose and have analyzed four seismic sequences that reflect the most common models of seismicity occurrence in the Italian territory. Our data always refer to the epicentral area, so that the contrib...

In case of a seismic event, a fast and draft damage map of the hit urban areas can be very useful, in particular when the epicentre of the earthquake is located in remote regions, or the main communication systems are damaged. Our aim is to analyse the capability of remote sensing techniques for damage detection in urban areas and to explore the co...

RIASSUNTO: Cucci L. & Tertulliani A., I terrazzi marini nell'area di capo vaticano (Arco Calabro): solo un record di sollevamento regio-nale o anche di deformazione cosismica? (IT ISSN 0394-3356, 2006). In questo lavoro presentiamo uno studio di dettaglio dei terrazzi nell'area di Capo Vaticano (Calabria tirrenica), insieme ad una revisio-ne del pi...

The area of Capo Vaticano in western Calabria displays a well-developed suite of marine terraces. This same region was hit in 1905 by one of the strongest - and still poorly cleared - earthquakes of the instrumental era. Our revision of the intensity map of the event confirms the location of the most damaged area (between Vibo Valentia and Capo Vat...