From 4 September, the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) will publish, in real time, on the Twitter channel @INGVterremoti the preliminary locations of earthquakes, calculated automatically by the software of the Seismic Surveillance Room of Rome.
A couple of minutes after the earthquake, for seismic events with a magnitude greater than 3, a tweet will be released with the automatic estimation of the epicenter and the magnitude. This will only happen if the quality parameters indicate that the preliminary information is sufficiently reliable. This information will be "tweeted" on the sidelines of the communication that the INGV Seismic Surveillance Room makes to the Civil Protection Department.
The automatic location and magnitude are calculated by the software without human intervention and are therefore subject to the uncertainties of hypocentral coordinates and magnitude inherent in the calculation system. To date, INGV has only communicated the location reviewed by the seismologists on duty in the Seismic Surveillance Room, an operation that requires up to 30 minutes of processing, on average about 10-12 minutes after the earthquake occurred.
Example of the information contained in the two tweets for the same event. Above: first provisional estimate. Below: revised estimate after analysis by seismologists in the INGV seismic room. Note the time difference between the two tweets (about 11 minutes)
With this decision, in the event that an earthquake occurs, INGV intends to disseminate an initial indication of the epicentral area and magnitude as quickly as possible.
The speed of the information can go to the detriment of its accuracy and some imprecision in the communication of the preliminary data will therefore be possible. For this reason, magnitude and epicenter will initially be communicated without indicating specific values, but providing a range of values for the magnitude, while as regards the epicenter, the province where it falls will initially be indicated (or the area if at sea or beyond beyond national borders).