Fast Determination of Moment Tensors and Rupture History: what has been learned from the 6 April 2009 L’Aquila earthquake sequence

Abstract

On 6 April 2009, a magnitude Mw = 6.1 earthquake struck the Abruzzi region in central Italy. Despite its moderate size, the earthquake caused more than 300 fatalities and partially destroyed the city of L’Aquila and many surrounding villages. In this study we present a retrospective analysis of the rapid source parameters determination procedure developed at INGV (Scognamiglio et al. 2009) as applied to the L’Aquila seismic sequence. Our approach consists of two stages: the near real-time determination of the seismic moment tensor, which is already routinely performed for all M≥ 3.5 earthquakes; and the rapid imaging of the rupture history on a finite fault for earthquakes with M≥ 6.0.