A Section active on many hot fronts in which INGV is the protagonist: from seismic surveillance of the country to tsunami warnings for the Mediterranean area, through Earth observation, satellite monitoring of volcanic eruptions and that of changes in the level of sea.
Our journey to discover the Sections of the Institute takes us today to Rome, to the headquarters of the National Earthquake Observatory (ONT). Here we interviewed its Director, Salvatore Stramondo, who told us how in these long months of the pandemic his Section has been able to adapt to the need to continue to operate the beating heart of INGV, the Seismic Surveillance Room.
We also faced with him the great responsibility with which he has been invested in these years at the helm of the ONT and some of the episodes that most affected him, professionally and personally.
Salvatore, how long have you been Director of the ONT of INGV?
I have been Director of the ONT since February 21, 2017, more than four years ago. I took over "on the run", because the colleague who was Director before me resigned and I was appointed somewhat abruptly. At the end of 2017, however, there was the call document for the following three-year period and therefore from there the real adventure of my first term as Director started, which ended in December 2020. My second three-year period began in January.
What does this position mean to you?
Well it is certainly a great satisfaction, but I would say even more a great responsibility. The Director of the ONT deals with seismic surveillance in Italy and tsunami warning in the Mediterranean, since the Surveillance Room of the INGV home these two services. Covering this position is, as I said, a great responsibility which also entails, I must say, an extremely intense working life: when a particularly important seismic event occurs, for example, colleagues - rightly so - do not hesitate to call me even in the middle of the Night. In short, it is a full-time job, but without a doubt a very stimulating one.
What are the main activities of the ONT?
The ONT is a very large section of the INGV, with a heterogeneous nature as regards the activities that are carried out within it.
It was born as a mainly seismological section: the Seismic Hall, the National Seismic Network and today also the Geodetic Network of the Institute are hinged at the ONT (which was once called CNT, i.e. "National Earthquake Centre"). We therefore have a structure that manages some of the most important infrastructures of the Body. Equally important is the Earth observation component: in fact, a Laboratory has been set up in our Section that deals with satellite radar data processing and, moreover, most of the activities of the new INGV Earth Observation Center take place within the ONT.
We also carry out important activities in the volcanological field, because we manage the satellite data acquisition antennas which are very important for detecting, for example, the plume of Etna, i.e. the gaseous emissions of the volcano, as well as for monitoring the start of an eruption volcanic, again from satellite. These antennas are positioned on our roof, here in the Institute's headquarters in Rome, and are a further infrastructure hinged on the ONT.
Last but not least, as a Section we also deal with environmental issues: among these, for example, the study of sea level variations with the analysis of the impact that this phenomenon has on coastal areas. Among other things, this type of study is also strongly connected with the monitoring of cultural assets - let's just think of the very numerous ports of the Roman era distributed along our coastal areas - and with the evaluation of the medium and long-term effects that sea level changes have on cultural heritage or coastal infrastructure.
How many colleagues are in the ONT?
We are about 150 colleagues, plus staff fellows, fellows, research associates, and so on. It should be remembered that the ONT has its main office here in Rome, but is actually distributed throughout the national territory with other offices in Ancona, Grottaminarda (AV) and Rende (CS), personnel in Sicily, at the Palermo office , and with the new offices based on the Universities of Cassino and Bari.
What was, in these years as Director, the most important professional episode that you would like to tell?
There have been several... One episode that was quite unique certainly remains the visit here to the Institute by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, in 2018. Beyond the inevitable emotion, I had the pleasure of welcoming him to our Surveillance Room and I must say that the thing that struck me the most, besides the fact that he listened carefully to all the various explanations, was that once the visit was over he went back to greet all the shift workers one by one, giving us the concrete perception that he was on the side his very deep attention to our work.
Another episode that I would like to tell for personal and emotional reasons concerns one of the various agreements that as an organization we have entered into in recent years with the ONT in the front row: specifically, the protocol that we signed with the Carabinieri. It was another important moment because we managed after so many years to have the possibility of using the infrastructure of the Arma to install sensors both in emergencies and for ordinary seismic monitoring. It is an episode that I will not forget precisely because of the prestige of the result we managed to obtain.
And the funniest anecdote?
Well there are many, perhaps one in particular. As you know, in the Institute we receive (or rather, we received before the pandemic changed all the cards on the table) many foreign delegations. While watching one of these, some time ago, while we were still in the Surveillance Room and after the classic "customary" questions at the end of our explanations on the service activities we carry out 24 hours a day, the translator who accompanied this delegation informs me that the head of delegation had one last question for me. I get him to talk and the question was something like this: “You are well organized to face various risks. But if a meteorite were to fall on the Institute, what would you do?”. The question was absolutely serious… To which, I must say a little perplexed, I replied that in that case there would be much bigger problems to think about. Obviously I remember this episode with a smile, it was perhaps one of the most curious that has happened to me during my career.
How have the changes in everyday life due to the Covid-19 pandemic changed the activities of your Section?
I would make a distinction between two levels on which, in my opinion, the impact of the pandemic has been very strong. The first is the work of the Section in the strict sense and concerns our daily work: we no longer hold face-to-face meetings, for example, and in my opinion this is becoming a problem, not only due to the number of scheduled meetings which is now very high, but also because meeting exclusively through platforms such as 'Meet' made us lose the possibility of confronting each other even in a very frank way. Something that can be said in person is hardly said via 'Meet', just as some of the discussions that often took place over coffee today are not addressed.
The second level on which the impact of Covid-19 has been very strong is clearly the seismic surveillance activity in the Sala. From the very first days when we started talking about the pandemic, therefore starting from the end of February last year, as head of the national seismic surveillance and tsunami warning service I had to make a series of decisions and make some very important choices. Among these, for example, physically isolating the entire Surveillance Room environment, dividing shift workers into teams, making sure that everyone wore a mask (and, as you will recall, in the very first phase of the emergency there were no masks available in Italy and we had to do our best to look for them outside our country), activate a daily sanitization of the environments, and so on. All this was possible thanks to the strong spirit of service of the shift workers and all the colleagues who work for and in the Room. Furthermore, thanks to our IT colleagues, we have developed systems that today allow remote control of the Room: this was of great use because at a certain point, specifically close to the second pandemic wave, therefore during last autumn, we had to consider also the hypothesis of moving the shift workers out of the Room to minimize the chances of meetings between colleagues and, therefore, of any contact and consequent spread of the virus. Fortunately, in the end we managed to isolate each of the four shift workers in a separate environment from the others, still within the Institute, without having to make them work remotely. The Room continues to be constantly connected with the officials, with the Director and with those on call through the 'Meet' rooms that we always have open so that any problems that arise we can connect. During the sanitization operations of the environments, the staff leave their workstations and control is assumed remotely using the IT tools I mentioned earlier.
All in all, therefore, even in an extremely critical situation on a global level, we have managed to take important steps forward from a technological point of view which, in my opinion, would not have been achieved in such a short time if it hadn't been for the stringent need to do them. Let's say that, for the worse, we can consider it an opportunity for growth.
Are there any future projects regarding the Section that you would like to anticipate?
The ONT is certainly a Section at the forefront of new research developments. At the moment we are working in particular on integrating the large amount of data that we acquire: these are multi-parameter data ranging from seismological data to geodetic data and satellite data. Integrating this data, making databases searchable is an important technological development that allows us to collect and make usable data of different kinds: when we talk about big data it must always be remembered, in fact, that if one is not able to correctly interrogate an increasingly vast amount of data, extracting its information content, this will only become a large amount of space occupied on the disk.
We are also continuing to work on the integration between the Operations Rooms that INGV has in Rome, Naples and Catania: it is a great project that has brought about, let us not forget it, unprecedented steps forward. We always have to compare ourselves with the past: everything is perfectible, but if we look at the past we clearly see that the progress over time has been enormous.
We are also developing systems cloud to make our data available to all and, at the same time, to solve the ever-increasing problems of storage while implementing a more prudent management of resources.
As regards the agreements that INGV is developing for the future and which will see the ONT as the protagonist, I would like to mention in particular the support for those who manage some of the critical national infrastructures, such as for example large industries, or the motorway network, or even the national railway network. This is an extremely interesting topic, since the managers of these strategic infrastructures for the country turn to us, as an Institute and as an NGO, to receive support in the development of advanced technologies and skills aimed at managing the critical issues of these plants, linked, for example, to the seismic, volcanic or environmental risk that can impact them.