The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology is always in motion, like the Earth: on Sunday 29 September, twenty years after the enactment of Legislative Decree number 381 of 1999, we opened the doors of the Rome office to the citizens to tell our history and the work that our researchers carry out with passion every day. Over the next two days many middle and high school students and representatives of institutions and research bodies came to visit us: the Minister of MIUR Lorenzo Fioramonti, the Minister for Relations with Parliament Federico D'Incà, the Forestry Unit Commander, Environmental and Agri-foodstuffs of the Carabinieri Ciro D'Angelo, the Head of the Civil Protection Department Angelo Borrelli, the President of the CNR Massimo Inguscio, the President of the National Academy of Sciences of the XL Annibale Mottana, the President of ISPRA Stefano Laporta, the Head of the of Casa Italia Roberto Giovanni Marino, the President of ISTAT Gian Carlo Blangiardo, Senator Maria Domenica Castellone and Senator Ruggiero Quarto, as well as various other Presidents of research institutions, demonstrating great attention and interest in our research and monitoring activities . Parallel to the appointments in Rome, the fifteenth edition of the International Conference of Gas Geochemistry (ICGG15) organized by the Palermo Section of INGV was held in Milazzo (ME). A week of meetings and seminars that attracted more than one hundred gas geochemistry experts from all over the world to discuss the latest discoveries in the application of this "science that cuts across all sciences".
We inaugurated the year of celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of our Institute with the usual appointment of Planet Earth Week, which this year took place in conjunction with the important Civil Protection Week.
Another important appointment saw us engaged in Naples in EXE Flegrei 2019, the first exercise on volcanic risk in the Phlegraean area. Organized by the Civil Protection Department and the Campania Region, for four days it involved thousands of Phlegrean citizens in the simulation of the emergency phases. In our scientific involvement, we have analyzed the data that was "produced" from time to time by the volcano and immediately transmitted to the responsible bodies. A test that has allowed us to know more and more how efficient our monitoring routine is and what we need to plan to improve it.
The Institute organized a conference on Stromboli in Catania on 22 and 23 October, to analyze what occurred during the emergency phase of July and August of the two paroxysmal eruptions and to plan the organization of the new Monitoring Center of the Aeolian Islands, which will as a connection for all research and monitoring by INGV both for civil protection purposes and for basic research in the volcanic arc of the lower Tyrrhenian Sea.
INGV then inaugurated its new headquarters in Pisa on 28 October: another important pillar in the institution's structure which takes shape and strengthens its scientific and operational development.
Participating in these appointments has reminded us, once again, how collecting data on the Earth is a bit like preparing bricks. But for the construction of a beautiful palace, the work of the architect is necessary. In other words, there is a need for a research project and a physical model to explain the phenomenon, i.e. the ability to interpret and understand nature. The three departments, Environment, Earthquakes and Volcanoes are about to activate three large institutional projects, aimed at studying climate change, the mechanisms of generation of major seismic events and the preparatory phases of eruptions, having as a common denominator the three-dimensional reconstruction of the crust and terrestrial mantle under Italy and its seas.
Understanding how the energy that is unleashed in an earthquake in a few seconds accumulates over the centuries, for example, is one of the primary and dutiful ambitions of every researcher in this field. The same goes for the dynamics of volcanoes: knowing their events and trying to predict them as soon as possible through the chemical-physical parameters that characterize them is the mission of our volcanologists. The rise in sea level, the 'space wheater' are not only topical issues, but scientific frontier.
INGV staff put their heart and effort into studying these issues, both during emergency phases and during the daily activities of maintaining the infrastructures, in carrying out their research, in building a knowledge society to understand how the Earth is made up and how it works, to better enter into the depths of our nature, our existence and, above all, to offer the fundamental elements for the best culture of prevention from natural risks.