An online catalogue, constantly updated, allows the reader to move backwards in the parameters of each single earthquake up to the reading of the original sources which made its study possible. The "Catalogue of Severe Earthquakes in Italy and in the Mediterranean area (CFTI5Med), drawn up by INGV, is the subject of a very recent publication in the journal Nature Scientific Data
A precious accessible and easily consultable collection of 1.259 earthquakes that occurred in the Italian area between 461 BC and 1997, and 475 further events that affected the extended Mediterranean area between 760 BC and 1500, completed by over 47.000 testimonies , is the result of the work of a team from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV).
"The article 'CFTI5Med, the new release of catalog of strong earthquakes in Italy and in the Mediterranean area' just published in the journal Nature Scientific Data" - comments Gianluca Valensise, co-author of the publication and Research Director of INGV - "documents the latest version of the Catalog of Strong Earthquakes in Italy and in the Mediterranean area, published in 2018 and called CFTI5Med. This version”, continues the expert, “brings numerous innovations, from updating data for numerous earthquakes, to the geo-referencing and re-processing of over 2.300 descriptions of the environmental effects of strong earthquakes. More than 23.000 of the testimonies used - about half of the total - have been reformatted with modern and homogeneous criteria and can be downloaded in .pdf format in the form of scans or transcripts. Finally, the possibility of representing seismic events and their effects in the GIS (Geographical Information System) environment has been implemented together with many other information levels containing, for example, geological maps, seismogenic faults, instrumental seismological data and more, at the choice of the user".
The first Catalog of Severe Earthquakes in Italy (CFTI 1) dates back to 1995 and was drawn up in collaboration between the then National Institute of Geophysics (INGV) and the company SGA (History Geophysics Environment). The goal was to collect an exhaustive repertoire of strong Italian earthquakes, their impact on the territory for each locality involved, and the resulting social and economic consequences.
“The information available in Italy on past earthquakes”, continues Valensise, “has no equal in the rest of the world and forms an essential basis for any assessment of seismic hazard. The CFTI5Med, in fact, is not only the main source of basic data for the INGV Parametric Catalog of Italian Earthquakes (CPTI), the reference catalog on a national scale, but it is also used by researchers of different backgrounds such as geologists, experts of seismotectonics, engineers, architects and historians”.
Given the strong international interest, in 2000 an English version of the Catalog (the CFTI 3) was published in the Annals of Geophysics. Following the publication of two huge bodies of data on the seismicity of the Mediterranean area up to the year 1000 and between the 2007th and XNUMXth centuries, the pertinence area of the catalog was extended to the whole Mediterranean basin, and in XNUMX a new version of the catalog was developed in the form of a computerized database managed through a web-GIS system.
"The activity is continuing with the further refinement of the contents of the CFTI5Med in view of the publication of a version 6", concludes Gianluca Valensise, "expected for 2020. In the coming weeks the CFTI will be joined by the CFTILAb, Advanced Laboratory of Historical Seismology : a channel designed to encourage the sharing of methods, IT tools, literature and iconography on the subject, starting from the numerous volumes published by INGV and SGA over more than three decades".
Abstract
CFTI5Med, the new release of catalog of strong earthquakes in Italy and in the Mediterranean area
Emanuela Guidoboni, Graziano Ferrari, Gabriele Tarabusi, Giulia Sgattoni, Alberto Comastri, Dante Mariotti, Cecilia Ciuccarelli, Maria Giovanna Bianchi, Gianluca Valensise
A key element for assessing seismic hazard and risk is the availability of a comprehensive dataset on past earthquakes. Here we present the rationale, structure and contents of CFTI5Med (), the 2018 version of the Catalog of Strong Earthquakes in Italy: a large multidisciplinary effort including historians, seismologists and geologists. It was conceived in 1989, following the inception of GIS technology, and first published in 1995 to offer a full account of Italy's strongest earthquakes, of their territorial impact and associated social and economic upheaval. Subsequent versions (1997, 2000, 2007) entailed a fine tuning of research methodologies, included additional research on Italian earthquakes, and were extended to large earthquakes of the Mediterranean area. CFTI5Med comprised an opportunity to streamline the structure of the Catalog database and propose a renovated user interface. The new front-end (1) grants an easier, intuitive access to the data, including earthquake effects on the environment, and (2) allows all data to be displayed jointly with relevant topographic, geological and seismological overlays published as web services.
#ingv #cfti #earthquakes #seismic history #Mediterranean
picture 1 – Quite imaginative representation of the effects in Messina of the earthquake and tsunami of February 5, 1783. The earthquake occurred in Calabria, but Messina was also hit hard. As it was the most important city in the area it was often depicted in images like this one.
picture 2 - Screenshot of the CFTI5Med, centered on the 1560 Barletta earthquake. On May 21st there was a seismic event of magnitude 3.9 in the same area.