Graziano Ferrari

National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology | INGV · Sezione di Bologna

A key element for assessing seismic hazard and risk is the availability of a comprehensive dataset on past earthquakes. Here we present the rationale, structure and contents of CFTI5Med ( https://doi.org/10.6092/ingv.it-cfti5 ), the 2018 version of the Catalogue of Strong Earthquakes in Italy: a large multidisciplinary effort including historians,...

The March 11th, 1978 Ferruzzano earthquake is the most recent moderate-to-major earthquake occurred in the southern Calabrian region (southern Italy), one among the highest seismic risk areas of the whole Mediterranean. Previous information available from the literature on the 1978 earthquake is quite contrasting and not well framed in the regional...

The Catalogo dei Forti Terremoti in ltalia (Catalogue of Strong Italian Earthquakes) is the most important outcome of a well-established collaboration between the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica (ING; since 2000 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, INGV), the leading Italian institution for basic and applied research in seismology and so...

The 2016–2017 Central Italy earthquakes have shown that the local seismic risk is dominated by the extreme vulnerability of the building stock. We attempt to rank the vulnerability of Apennines' settlements based on a combined geological-historical approach. We first discuss the reasons of the apparent paradox caused by the very different seismic r...

Spectral analysis of earthquake recordings provides fundamental seismological information. It is used for magnitude calculation, estimation of attenuation, and the determination of fault rupture properties including slip area, stress drop, and radiated energy. Further applications are found in site-effect studies and for the calibration of simulati...

On 21 August 1962 an earthquake sequence set off near the city of Benevento, in Italy's southern Apennines. Three earthquakes, the largest having Mw 6.1, struck virtually the same area in less than 40 min (at 18:09, 18:19 and 18:44 UTC, respectively). Several historical earthquakes hit this region, and its seismic hazard is accordingly among the hi...

This article corrects: F. Bernardi, M.G. Ciaccio, B. Palombo and G. Ferrari, Moment tensor inversion of early instrumental data: application to the 1917 High Tiber Valley, Monterchi earthquake, Annals of Geophysics, 59 (3), 2016, S0318; doi:10.4401/ag-6850.

In this paper we present a new study on the High Tiber Valley earthquake occurred on April 26, 1917. Using the digitized data from mechanical seismograph records, we computed the source parameters like focal mechanism and moment magnitude from moment tensor (MT). The study of historical earthquakes from an instrumental perspective is crucial becaus...

The aim of this study is to contribute to the assessment of natural hazards in a seismically active area of southern Italy through the joint analysis of historical sources and fluid geochemistry. In particular, our studies have been focalized in the Val d'Agri basin, in the Apennines extensional belt, since it hosts the largest oilfield in onshore...

We apply a computer-aided methodology to assess macroseismic intensity from the descriptions reported by documentary material available for eight Italian earthquakes occurred around the beginning of the instrumental era. The procedure consists of three phases: (i) the identification of significant macroseismic effects on the sources and their archi...

All in all, the article by CC13 appears as the result of a process of crude simplification, something unacceptable from the point of view of historical criticism and hence of historical seismology. In a further oversimplification of complex facts, CC13 discussed only the evidence available for the 22 February 1346 shock, neglecting the hypothesis o...

On 30 October 1930, an Mw 5.8 earthquake hit the northern Marche coastal area (central Italy), causing significant damage (I0 VIII–IX degree Mercalli–Cancani– Sieberg) along a 40 km stretch of the Adriatic coast between Pesaro and Ancona, centered on the town of Senigallia. This area is characterized by relatively infrequent and moderate-sized eart...

Science is the study that leads to discriminate knowledge of the material world based on observation, experiment and induction. Geophysics is the combination of the former concern about the explanation of every day phenomena in our enviroment, with the achievements of physics that were exploited within the laboratory, either by experiments or by t...

On December 16, 1857, an earthquake wreaked havoc across a huge area of the regions of Basilicata and Campania (Val d'Agri and Vallo di Diano). More than 180 villages in an area of over 20,000 km 2 suffered very severe damage. More than 6,000 houses collapsed or became uninhabitable, and 19,000 people were killed. In the months of February and Marc...

This report describes the ISC-GEM Global Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue (1900-2009) created on the request and with sponsorship from the GEM Foundation.  The ISC-GEM Global Instrumental Earthquake Catalogue (1900-2009) is a major step forward on the way to improve characterization of spatial distribution of seismicity, magnitude frequency relat...

We developed a procedure for the encoding and the computer analysis of the macroseismic effects deduced from historical sources that allow the complete formalization of the process of the seismic intensity assessment. In particular we archived as alphanumeric codes the macroseismic information (i.e the texts representing effect descriptions) decomp...

p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Times;">This contribution presents a balance of the research performed in some national and international projects concerning the history of seismology with a view to the scientific and historical use of scientific correspondence between earth science scholars. We also present some of the conten...

p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Times;">The Observatory of Collegio Alberoni in Piacenza boasts a long tradition of observations in the field of the Earth Sciences. Founded first of all as an astronomical observatory in 1751 it gradually specialized also in meteorological observation starting in 1802 and that of instrumental s...

p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Times;">Giovanni Capellini (1833-1922) was one of the leading representatives of the Italian and international scientific community from the mid-19th century until 1922, the year of his death. Professor of Geology at the University of Bologna from 1860, geologist, palaeontologist and archaeologi...

p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Times;">Giulio Grablovitz was one of the leading figures in Italian and international seismology from the second half of the 1880s up to the 1920s. The documentary assets of his long, multifaceted and intense scientific experience consist of several thousand items, amongst which seismic and inst...

The authors examine the historical roots of the Italian building characteristics, from which styles and techniques were born that have in time shaped the country’s great architectural wealth. This historical approach aims to place the monuments in the cultural and environmental contexts, where the rules of good building have had to come to terms wi...

Knowledge of the urban seismic scenario raises complex elements for technical and cultural consideration which may improve the analysis of the conservation and restoration of historical buildings and monuments. These elements cover various specialised viewpoints, from historical seismology and the history of architecture and town planning, to engin...

During the analysis of the historical seismicity of Italy, territorial and social elements emerged that in the long term have strongly influenced the effects of the earthquakes. These elements are here presented as historical variables of the degree of intensity. The Italian context is characterised by a long and continuous history of housing, with...

The macroseismic scale used for the classification of the more than 33100 seismic effects of the Catalogue of Strong Italian Earthquakes (CFTI3) is the Mercalli Cancani Sieberg (MCS). As in all scales, the use of the MCS scale in determining the macroseismic intensity of historical earthquakes involves difficulties regarding the classification of d...

Annals of Geophysics, 43, 4, 609-868 (with database on CD-ROM)

Scientific letters, of great importance in the history of science and scientific instrumentation, have a particular importance for those sectors of earth sciences in which structured observation networks are distributed across the territory, such as seismology, meteorology, geomagnetism and astronomy. It may come as a surprise to know that in the h...

p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 9.0px Times;">In the past few decades historical documentation of a scientific and non-scientific nature has taken on critical importance in the different sectors of seismology: historical seismology and historical seismometry. Modern technologies offer unique opportunities for cataloguing and efficie...

The area investigated, the Sansepolcro basin, is characterized by the presence of important earthquakes in the past with estimated intensity even larger than IX MCS (the 1352 Monterchi earthquake, the 1389 Boccaserriola, the 1458 Citta' di Castello, the 1781 Cagliese and the 1917 Monterchi-Citerna earthquakes, CPTI Working Group, 2004) and by a sur...

In previous works we developed a Fortran procedure for the encoding and the computer analysis of the ma-croseismic effects deduced from historical sources that allow the complete formalization of the process of seismic intensity assessment. The texts representing the macroseismic information are decomposed in 5 main syntactic elementary components...

The 1908 earthquake is one of the most catastrophic events in Italian history, recorded by most of the historical seismic stations existing at that time. Some of the seismograms recorded by these stations have already been used by many authors for the purpose of studying source characteristics, although only copies of the original recordings were a...

The Southern Apennines chain is related to the west-dipping subduction of the Apulian lithosphere. The strongest seismic events mostly occurred in correspondence of the chain axis along normal NW-SE striking faults parallel to the chain axis. These structures are related to mantle wedge upwelling beneath the chain. In the foreland, faulting develop...

il 16 dicembre 1857 uno dei terremoti più distruttivi dell’Italia meridionale colpì una vasta area delle province di Potenza e di Salerno. Il resoconto della missione scientifica dell’ingegnere irlandese Robert Mallet nell’area del terremoto costituisce un “osservatorio” unico sul paesaggio e sui vari aspetti sociali, economici e culturali di quest...

The relevant results of the study of more than 1700 Italian historical earthquakes from the year 1000 to 1982 are presented here. The research was carried out from 1983 to 1987 as part of a study promoted by ENEL (the National Electricity Board) for the seismic siting of nuclear power plants. A single coherent project has been developed, that invol...

The Catalogue lists earthquakes that occurred in Italy between 461 B.C. and 1997, and earthquakes that occurred in the general Mediterranean area between the VIII century b.C. and the XV century. Italian earthquakes are based on the latest release of the Catalogo dei Forti Terremoti in Italia (Catalogue of Strong Italian Earthquakes), commonly re...

Thanks to the realisation of interactive virtual landscapes of the areas of Mallet’s travels a big step forward has been made, amongst other things, in the Mallet Laboratory project, in the honing of a methodology for the reconstruction of historical and anthropic natural landscapes. This is a methodology that integrates a complex historical and na...

Various authors, even in the pre-scientific age, hypothesised the existence of rotational waves, or at least the existence of "vortical motions". As the evidence of such motions, scientists have always distinguished the rotation of pinnacles and other ornamental elements of churches and monumental buildings. That kind of rotation is cited in variou...

Robert Mallet (1810-81), an Irish civil engineer who had been investigating the passage of artificial seismic waves, sought Royal Society support to test his theories in the field, after a devastating earthquake in Basilicata, a province in the Kingdom of Naples. The earthquake struck on 16 December 1857; in January 1858 Mallet began a month-long t...

"Per alcune miglia intorno al punto di unione del Moglia e dell'Agri, si osservano le conseguenze di una prodigiosa erosione fluviale. In molti punti del letto fluviale principale, qui da 500 a 700 piedi o anche di più in larghezza, sebbene raramente completamente coperto d'acqua, grandi masse galleggianti vengono trasportate via in inverno ad una...

The study of the great earthquakes and the analysis of their tectonic significance are very important elements in the evaluation of seismic potential, seismic hazard and risk. The analysis of the seismograms of historical earthquakes plays a crucial role in understanding the patterns of deformation energy release, the characteristics of propagation...

Over the last few decades, historical data have become increasingly important in the different sectors dealing with the mitigation of greater natural hazards. By historical data we mean both the instrumental ones, above all those of the last 100 years, and the descriptive ones that generally cover very broad chronological ranges. Suffice it to thin...

Landslides are caused by many different triggers, including earthquakes. In Italy, a detailed new generation catalogue of information on historical earthquakes for the period 461 B.C to 1997 is available (Catalogue of Strong Italian Earthquakes from 461 B.C. to 1997, ING-SGA 2000). The catalogue lists 548 earthquakes and provides information on a t...

The 1930 Irpinia earthquake is one of the most destructive events recorded by instruments in Italy. Several large events occurred in the same area before (1456, 1694, 1702, 1732, 1910) and after (1962, 1980, 1983) 1930. It has been hypothesized that significant differences characterized the source geometry. Early work carried out by several authors...

RIASSUNTO Questo contributo riassume i risultati di alcuni progetti di ricerca nazionali e internazionali relativi alla storia della sismologia in chiave di utilizzo scientifico e storico di corrispondenze scientifiche fra studiosi di scienze della Terra. Nel quadro di riferimento dei risultati metodologici e quantitativi prodotti, si propone un pr...

At the beginning of 1999, within the IASPEI Committee on Education, a subcommittee was created with the goal to promote (1) research, inventory, and recovery of historical instruments, recordings, station bulletins, papers, and scientific correspondence, (2) preservation and reproduction of seismograms and historical documents, especially scanning/...

We describe here how the origin time, the epicenter location, the epicentral intensity and the magnitude of the earthquakes included in the Catalogue of Strong Italian Earthquakes (CFT13) have been determined from the documentary information available. As the literature lacks widely accepted formal definitions for these parameters in the case of ma...

We describe a method for the encoding and the computer analysis of the macroseismic effects deduced from historical sources allowing the complete formalization of the process of seismic intensity assessment. It makes use of a multi-criteria decisions-support algorithm, based on the theory of the Fuzzy Sets. Analyzing the texts of the available sour...

Annals of Geophysics, 43, 4, 609-868 (with database on CD-ROM)

We propose a method for the encoding and the computer analysis of the macroseismic effects deduced from historical sources allowing the complete formalization of the process of seismic intensity assessment. In the framework of historical sismology we make use of a multi-criteria decisions-support algorithm, based on the theory of the Fuzzy Sets. By...

The use of a macroseismic scale often requires subjective choices and judgments which may produce inhomogeneities and biases in the resulting intensities. To get over this problem it would be necessary to formalize the decision process leading to the estimation of the macroseismic intensity but, on historical records, this is often hindered by the...

The authors&apos; aim in the following study is to contribute to the assessment of the seismic hazard of historical cities. From this preliminary analysis the general characteristics of the seismicity affecting Florence and the evaluation of its seismic hazard may be deduced. Florence is a < > city of world tourism, and its extraordinary artistic v...

This article describes the monitoring of certain mud volcanoes in the Northern Apennines of Italy. This monitoring was carried out from a geochemical point of view and its aim was to verify the seismic precursory nature of the mud volcano fluids. The operational strategy began by determining the regional character of the main physical and chemical...

A large data set on earthquake-related phenomena was collected in Italy during the last century. In this paper we consider the well-level measurements sampled with a daily frequency over a decade by D. Lorenzini in Porretta (near Bologna, Italy). These data were collected independently of earthquake occurrences and are important because of the abse...

The results obtained from a macroseismic study of the February 23, 1887 Ligurian earthquake are presented here. Although it is a recent and scientifically well-documented seismic event, macroseismic interpretations taking all the scientific observations into account were not available up to now.A detailed reconstruction of the macroseismic field wa...

The Northern Apennines have been subdivided into homogeneous zones, on the basis of recent structural evolution and crustal structure, in which the earthquake distribution can find a coherent framework. These zones, whose physiography is in strict connection with their structure, are: the Internal Peri-Tyrrhenian Belt; the External or Main Belt; th...

In 1977 the working group «Catalogo dei Terremoti» (GCT) responsible for the «Progetto Finalizzato Geodinamica» (PFG) acquired the ENEL Catalogue of Italian earthquakes which, as the most complete and updated collection on domestic historical seismicity, lists over 20,000 events. Twelve Operational Units, each having different territorial competenc...

In this note we make an examination of the control network installed in the Ancona area in 1975 for seismotectonic studies. From an analysis of the network there arises the possibility of achieving a considerable improvement in the results by considering a plan of work derived from thea priori analysis of the covariance matrix and improving the atm...

Rayleigh wave dispersion was observed in the Tyrrheniain sea and the Italian peninsula. In the Tyrrhenian and phase velocities were in the range of values characteristic of rift zones; a well developed low velocity channel (up to a depth of 180km) is required to fit the data. The lower part of the basin presents very low short period velocities com...