
Roberto BasiliIstituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia | INGV
Roberto Basili
PhD in Earth Sciences
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Introduction
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December 1999 - present
Publications
Publications (151)
Earthquake hazard analyses rely on seismogenic source models. These are designed in various fashions, such as point sources or area sources, but the most effective is the three-dimensional representation of geological faults. We here refer to such models as fault sources. This study presents the European Fault-Source Model 2020 (EFSM20), which was...
The 2020 update of the European Seismic Hazard Model (ESHM20) is the most recent and up-to-date assessment of seismic hazard for the Euro-Mediterranean region. The new model, publicly released in May 2022, incorporates refined and cross-border harmonized earthquake catalogues, homogeneous tectonic zonation, updated active fault datasets and geologi...
We present the first 3D crustal model of the epicentral region of the 1980, Mw 6.9, normal‐faulting Irpinia earthquake (southern Italy) determined by jointly interpreting the CROP‐04 deep seismic profile, a grid of commercial seismic lines, deep exploration wells, and a high‐resolution Local Earthquake Tomography. Despite numerous seismotectonic su...
The 2020 update of the European Seismic Hazard Model (ESHM20) is the most recent and up-to-date assessment of seismic hazard for the Euro-Mediterranean region. The new model, publicly released in May 2022, incorporates refined and cross-border harmonised earthquake catalogues, homogeneous tectonic zonation, updated active faults datasets and geolog...
The earthquake-resistant design of lifelines, such as pipelines, tunnels and bridges, is based on the reliable representation and estimation of the seismic loading. In the case of lifeline–fault crossings, the design fault displacement is typically derived from estimates based on fault dimensions via empirical fault scaling relations for a given “d...
SEISMOFAULTS.EU is the IT infrastructure designed and implemented to publish datasets that are
part of the European Databases of Seismogenic Faults (EDSF) installation hosted by the Istituto
Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia.
It consists of carefully selected and configured hardware and software in order to ensure a
reliable, and secure service...
Earthquake hazard analyses rely on the availability of seismogenic source models. These are designed in different fashions, such as point sources or area sources, but the most effective is the three-dimensional representation of geological faults. We here refer to such models as fault sources. This study presents the European Fault-Source Model 202...
Lifelines, such as pipelines, roads, and tunnels, are critical infrastructure and when crossing active tectonic faults, a reliable estimation of the fault displacement in case of an earthquake is required. The first and simplest approach is to use empirical fault scaling relations to compute the design fault displacement, but this may result in an...
Plain Language Summary
The Northern Apennines chain is characterized by thrust faults running from the Po Plain to the Adriatic Sea on the northeastern side of peninsular Italy. These thrusts are buried below ≈2,000 m cover of Plio‐Pleistocene deposits. Controversies arose about these thrust faults' activity and earthquake potential based on their...
The EU Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth (ChEESE) develops exascale transition capabilities in the domain of SolidEarth, an area of geophysics rich in computational challenges embracing different approaches to exascale (capability, capacity and urgent computing). The first implementation phase of the project (ChEESE-1P; 2018-2022) ad...
The development of structurally controlled basins is frequently dominated by inherited geological and tectonic structures, especially when the affected region has undergone multiple tectonic phases. In this study we use physically scaled analog models to analyze the impact of inherited faults on the evolution of a new extensional fault system and i...
In recent decades, geological modeling has significantly evolved, relying on the growing potential of hardware and software to manage and integrate vast datasets of 2D-3D geophysical underground data. Therefore, digitization and integration with other forms of data can often improve understanding of geological systems, even when using so-called vin...
The 2020 update of the European Seismic Hazard Model (ESHM20) is the most recent seismic hazard model of the Euro-Mediterranean region. It was built upon unified and homogenized datasets including earthquake catalogues, active faults, ground motion recordings and state-of-the-art modelling components, i.e. earthquake rates forecast and regionally v...
In this article we describe EPOS Seismology, the Thematic Core Service consortium for the seismology domain within the European Plate Observing System infrastructure. EPOS Seismology was developed alongside the build-up of EPOS during the last decade, in close collaboration between the existing pan-European seismological initiatives ORFEUS (Observa...
Whenever sedimentation exceeds the tectonic rate, the detection and investigation of active faults become challenging, especially when the investigated area is offshore. The coastal area of the central Adriatic is characterized by the presence of Plio-Pleistocene thrusts, which strongly controlled the evolution of the Apennines foredeep. Apart from...
The westernmost Mediterranean hosts part of the plate boundary between the European and African tectonic plates. Based on the scattered instrumental seismicity, this boundary has been traditionally interpreted as a wide zone of diffuse deformation. However, recent seismic images and seafloor mapping studies support that most of the plate convergenc...
We present a source solution for the tsunami generated by the Mw 6.6 earthquake that occurred on 2 May 2020, about 80 km offshore south of Crete, in the Cretan Passage, on the shallow portion of the Hellenic Arc subduction zone (HASZ). The tide gauges recorded this local tsunami on the southern coast of Crete and Kasos island. We used Crete tsunami...
The SW Iberian margin is one of the most seismogenic and tsunamigenic areas in W‐Europe, where large historical and instrumental destructive events occurred. To evaluate the sensitivity of the tsunami impact on the coast of SW Iberia and NW Morocco to the fault geometry and slip distribution for local earthquakes, we carried out a set of tsunami si...
Tsunami warning centres face the challenging task of rapidly forecasting tsunami threat immediately after an earthquake, when there is high uncertainty due to data deficiency. Here we introduce Probabilistic Tsunami Forecasting (PTF) for tsunami early warning. PTF explicitly treats data- and forecast-uncertainties, enabling alert level definitions...
The detection of recent tectonic deformation becomes overly challenging when sedimentation rates overtake tectonic rates. In the Adriatic Sea, Plio-Pleistocene foredeep deposits blanket the fold-and-thrust belt system of the Northern Apennines, concealing the bathymetric expression of the buried structures.
Despite the subtle to null geomorphic sig...
We present a source solution for the tsunami generated by the Mw 6.6 earthquake that occurred on May 2, 2020, about 807thinsp;km offshore south of Crete, in the Cretan Passage, on the shallow portion of the Hellenic Arc Subduction Zone (HASZ). The tide-gauges recorded this local tsunami on the southern coast of Crete island and Kasos island. We use...
When sedimentation rates overtake tectonic rates, the detection of ongoing tectonic deformation signatures becomes particularly challenging. The Northern Apennines orogen is one such case where a thick Plio-Pleistocene foredeep sedimentary cover blankets the fold-and-thrust belt, straddling from onshore (Po Plain) to offshore (Adriatic Sea), leadin...
In recent years, new approaches for developing earthquake rupture forecasts (ERFs) have been proposed to be used as an input for probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA). Zone-based approaches with seismicity rates derived from earthquake catalogs are commonly used in many countries as the standard for national seismic hazard models. In Italy...
Destructive tsunamis are most often generated by large earthquakes occurring at subduction interfaces, but also other “atypical” sources—defined as crustal earthquakes and non-seismic sources altogether—may cause significant tsunami threats. Tsunamis may indeed be generated by different sources, such as earthquakes, submarine or coastal landslides,...
Tsunamis are unpredictable and infrequent but potentially large impact natural disasters. To prepare, mitigate and prevent losses from tsunamis, probabilistic hazard and risk analysis methods have been developed and have proved useful. However, large gaps and uncertainties still exist and many steps in the assessment methods lack information, theor...
The Italian Tsunami Alert Center based at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (CAT-INGV) has been monitoring the Mediterranean seismicity in the past 8 yr to get fast and reliable information for seismically induced tsunami warnings. CAT-INGV is a tsunami service provider in charge of monitoring the seismicity of the Mediterranean Se...
Inundation maps are a fundamental tool for coastal risk management and in particular for designing evacuation maps and evacuation planning. These in turn are a necessary component of the tsunami warning systems’ last-mile. In Italy inundation maps are informed by a probabilistic tsunami hazard model. Based on a given level of acceptable risk, Itali...
The NEAM Tsunami Hazard Model 2018 (NEAMTHM18) is a probabilistic hazard model for tsunamis generated by earthquakes. It covers the coastlines of the North-eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and connected seas (NEAM). NEAMTHM18 was designed as a three-phase project. The first two phases were dedicated to the model development and hazard calculati...
The RETRACE-3D project (centRal italy EarThquakes integRAted Crustal model) focused on the revision of all the available geological and geophysical data in the area interested by the 2016-2018 seismic sequence of central Italy, with the final aim to reconstruct a reliable and consistent 3D geological model of that area. It is based on a collaborati...
S U M M A R Y The behaviour of tsunami waves at any location depends on the local morphology of the coasts, the encountered bathymetric features, and the characteristics of the source. However, the importance of accurately modelling the geometric properties of the causative fault for simulations of seismically induced tsunamis is rarely addressed....
The response of continental forelands to subduction and collision is a widely investigated topic in geodynamics. The deformation occurring within a foreland shared by two opposite‐verging chains, however, is uncommon and poorly understood. The Apulia Swell in the southern end of the Adria microplate (Africa‐Europe plate boundary, central Mediterran...
Fault plane attitude and dimension are important parameters for deriving seismotectonic information or input data for earthquake hazard assessment and in this sense a complete 3D view and characterization of geological and structural elements is essential. However, there is always a trade-off between structural complexity and data availability at t...
The Calabrian Arc subduction, southern Italy, is a critical structural element in the geodynamic evolution of the central Mediterranean basin. It is a narrow, northwest-dipping slab bordered to the southwest by the Alfeo Fault System (AFS) and to the northeast by a gradual transition to a collision. We used a dense set of two-dimensional high-penet...
The complexity of coseismic slip distributions influences the tsunami hazard posed by local and, to a certain extent, distant tsunami sources. Large slip concentrated in shallow patches was observed in recent tsunamigenic earthquakes, possibly due to dynamic amplification near the free surface, variable frictional conditions or other factors. We pr...
Detailed knowledge of the 3D basin structure underlying urban areas is of major importance for improving the assessment of seismic hazard and risk. However, mapping the major features of the shallow geological layers becomes expensive where large areas need to be covered. In this study, we propose an innovative tool, based mainly on single station...
We adopted a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the seismotectonic scenario of the 30 October 2016, Mw 6.5, Norcia earthquake, the largest shock of the 2016–2017 central Italy earthquake sequence. First, we used seismological and geodetic data to infer the dip of the main slip patch of the seismogenic fault that turned out to be rather low‐a...
The RETRACE-3D (centRal italy EarThquakes integRAted Crustal model) Project has been launched to build a new 3D geological model of the area struck by the 2016-2018 Central Italy seismic sequence, blending together in a synergic way the multi-disciplinary skills of a large community of researchers and experts of several research institutes (CNR-IGA...
The Earthquake Model of Middle East (EMME) project was carried out between 2010 and 2014 to provide a harmonized seismic hazard assessment without country border limitations. The result covers eleven countries: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Syria and Turkey, which span one of the seismically mos...
The Calabrian Arc is a one-of-a-kind subduction zone, featuring one of the shortest slab segments (<150 km), one of the thickest accretionary wedges, and one of the oldest oceanic crust in the world. Despite a convergence rate of up to 5 mm/y and well-known intraslab seismicity below 40 km, its shallow interface shows little signs of seismic activi...
The SPOT Project (potentially triggerable offshore seismicity and tsunamis) is aimed at helping Italian authorities to comply with the application of the Safety of Offshore Oil and Gas Operations European Directive (2013/30/EU) and the ensuing Italian codes. An extensive reconstruction of offshore geological structures is being implemented in order...
The median and standard deviation of empirical ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) are usually poorly constrained close to the seismogenic source due to the general lack of strong-motion records. In addition, the ground-motion variability associated with a single fault is even more difficult to assess because multiple records of earthquakes...
The development of new reverse faults and related folds is strongly controlled by the mechanical characteristics of the host rocks. In this study we analyze the impact of a specific kind of anisotropy, i.e. thin mechanical and frictional discontinuities, in affecting the development of reverse faults and of the associated folds using physical scale...
The association of faulting and folding is a common feature in mountain chains, fold-and-thrust belts, and ac-cretionary wedges. Kinematic models are developed and widely used to explain a range of relationships between faulting and folding. However, these models may result not to be completely appropriate to explain shortening in mechanically hete...
On 24 August 2016 a Mw 6.0 earthquake marked the beginning of a severe seismic sequence that struck Central
Italy. This shock was followed by a Mw 5.9 on 26 October, by a Mw 6.5 on 30 October, by two Mw 5.4 aftershocks
and by over 30,000 smaller shocks. Based on the widespread occurrence of surface breaks the majority of workers
agreed that this se...
The ground‐motion median and standard deviation of empirical ground‐motion prediction equations (GMPEs) are usually poorly constrained in the near‐source region due to the general lack of strong‐motion records. Here we explore the use of a deterministic–stochastic simulation technique, specifically tailored to reproduce directivity effects, to eval...
Large tsunamis occur infrequently but have the capacity to cause enormous numbers of casualties, damage to the built environment and critical infrastructure, and economic losses. A sound understanding of tsunami hazard is required to underpin management of these risks, and while tsunami hazard assessments are typically conducted at regional or loca...
Key Points: Direct measurements of bedrock fault surface exposure in the central Apennines Registered exposure occurred without contributing tectonic/seismogenic movement Fault slip rates and earthquake recurrence periods calculated from only bedrock fault surface exposure are called into question Abstract We investigate the geomorphic proces...
p> We show and discuss the similarities among the 2016 Amatrice (Mw 6.0), 1997 Colfiorito-Sellano (Mw 6.0-5.6) and 2009 L’Aquila (Mw 6.3) earthquakes. They all occurred along the crest of the central Apennines and were caused by shallow dipping faults between 3 and 10 km depth, as shown by their characteristic InSAR signature. We contend that these...
We reconstruct the tectonic framework of the 24 August 2016, Amatrice earthquake. At least three main faults, including an older thrust fault (Sibillini Thrust), played an active role in the sequence. The mainshock nucleated and propagated along an extensional fault located in the footwall of the Sibillini Thrust, but due to the preliminary nature...
We use wet-clay analogue models to investigate how pre-existing discontinuities (i.e. structures inherited from
previous tectonic phases) affect the evolution of a normal fault at the Earth’s surface. To this end we first
perform a series of three reference experiments driven by a 45° dipping master fault unaffected by pre-existing
discontinuities...
Slip rate is a critical parameter for describing geologic and earthquake rates of known active faults. Although faults are inherently three-dimensional surfaces, the paucity of data allows for estimating only the slip rate at the ground surface and often only few values for an entire fault. These values are frequently assumed as proxies or as some...
We propose a procedure for uncertainty quantification in Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Analysis (PTHA), with a special emphasis on the uncertainty related to statistical modelling of the earthquake source in Seismic PTHA (SPTHA), and on the separate treatment of subduction and crustal earthquakes (treated as background seismicity). An event tree app...
Fault-related folding kinematic models are widely used to explain accommodation of crustal shortening. These models, however, include simplifications, such as the assumption of constant growth rate of faults. This value sometimes is not constant in isotropic materials, and even more variable if one considers naturally anisotropic geological systems...
The vast majority of active faulting studies are performed at the scale of individual, presumably seismogenic faults or fault strands. Most SHA approaches and models, however, require homogeneus information on potential earthquake sources over the entire tectonic domain encompassing the site(s) of interest. Although it is out of question that accur...