The death of Bruno De Simoni, ex-head of the "SISMOS" project of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), which took place in recent days, saddens the many colleagues who have worked with him and shared strategic projects for our institution. We host a memory of Bruno written by Rodolfo Console (ex-manager of INGV).
I learned with great sadness the news of the death of my friend Bruno De Simoni, which took place on 18 November last. I have known Bruno since his period of university studies at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", also following his degree thesis in Physics in 1976.Bruno has always had a link with the National Institute of Geophysics (ING, which later merged into INGV) being a "son of art". Father Duilio, in fact, had been a technician of the Central Geophysical Observatory of Monteporzio Catone, in the years in which I too worked in that same location.
Bruno's first official involvement in ING was in the context of a contract carried out between 1977 and 1979 in the research group that dealt with the drafting of the National Seismic Catalog commissioned from the Institute by the Ministry of Public Works. From 16 March 1979 to 30 September 1979, winner of a national competition, he worked at the Superior Council of Public Works, taking care of the design and instrumentation of the accelerometric network of said Ministry. In this period he was part of the Italian delegation for the study of the Montenegrin earthquake.
On 1 October 1979, winner of the national competition, he was hired at the ING, where he dealt with various problems of seismology, both theoretical and experimental.
On 1 May 1984, the era of Enzo Boschi's presidency began, he was appointed to coordinate the National Centralized Seismic Network and developed optimization programs for it as well as directly following its development. From 1 October 1984 to September 1991 he directed the Seismic Department of ING. Meanwhile, in June 1990 he had won the national competition for the qualification of research manager.
Among Bruno's international commitments I remember:
- the management of the project for the remote transmission via satellite of the digitally acquired seismic data within the ambit of the "Progetto Argo", financed by the Civil Protection (1993-1995);
- coordination of the scientific activity of the Project "Southern Europe Network for Analysis of Seismic Data" funded by the Commission of the European Communities (1993-1996);
- The agreement between ING and Efimdata SpA for the realization of the project "Computer center for the study of seismic events, through the digital archiving and processing of historical seismograms of the National Institute of Geophysics", signed in December 1993.
Bruno's activity at the ING continued in September 1996 with his appointment as head of the working group in charge of following the implementation of the "Historical Seismograms" project (initially the name of the project then renamed the "SISMOS" Project), of which Massimo Cocco and myself were also part of it. These objectives were then pursued in the INGV with the creation of the "SISMOS" functional unit, dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of the heritage of historical seismograms, of which Bruno was the manager until August 2003. In the last years before his placement in retirement, which took place on August 1, 2010, Bruno had received a command at the "National Seismic Service" in Castelnuovo di Porto.
In parallel with the numerous commitments of an organizational nature, which have absorbed most of his activity, Bruno has also carried out dedicated research activities, among other things, to the problems of the National Seismic Catalog, to problems connected to accelerometric instrumentation, to the vectorization of digitized seismograms, and in-depth study of classical seismology topics (problems on magnitude, epicentral determination of teleseisms, general theories on fracture mechanisms and more).
Bruno will always be remembered for his commitment to work and his shrewd humor with a "Frascatan" character, a characteristic inherited from his family traditions.