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 solid earth geophysics, and SGA (Storia Geofisica Ambiente), a private firm specializing in the historical investigation and systematization of adverse natural phenomena. The collaboration with SGA came to an end in 2007, when part of its personnel became INGV permanent staff.
The Catalogo dei Forti Terremoti in ltalia, 461 a.C. - 1980 was first published in Italian in 1995 by Boschi et al. (1995: CFTI 1). It was intended as a complete account of Italian "strong earthquakes", of their territorial impact and of the social and economic upheaval caused. The decision of focusing only on the largest earthquakes was dictated by the need to establish a priority among the vast number of events reported in traditional catalogues. Only earthquakes with a reported maximum intensity equal to or bigger than intensity VIII-IX on the MCS scale were considered in the first release of the catalogue, but this threshold was progressively relaxed for its subsequent versions. The second release, that appeared two years later, included more earthquakes, was based on more accurate research, and covered a longer time span (461 B.C. to 1990) (Boschi et al., 1997: CFTI 2).
Knowing that the record of Italian historical seismicity is probably the most extensive of the whole world, and hence that the catalogue could be of interest for a wider international readership, Boschi et al. (2000) decided to share this experience with colleagues from foreign countries by preparing an English version of the catalogue. The new release (CFTI 3) entailed much additional research and fine tuning of methodologies and algorithms, including earthquakes up to 1997.
Following the publication of two large research bodies on the seismicity of the Mediterranean region up to the 10th century (Guidoboni et al., 1994) and between the 11th and 15th century (Guidoboni and Comastri, 2005), the area of relevance of the catalogue was extended to the entire Mediterranean basin. The new contents, which included only basic seismological parameters (felt reports and epicentral location for Italian earthquakes, epicentral location only for the other Mediterranean earthquakes), appeared in a new version of the catalogue (CFTI4Med), published in 2007 as a web and web-GIS repository (Guidoboni et al., 2007).