Strong motion monitoring in Italy

Abstract

Research in the fields of earthquake engineering or engineering seismology requires strong motion data for several applications, such as the development of ground motion prediction equations, the evaluation of shaking scenarios, the definition of probabilistic hazard maps and the formulation of seismic codes. Italy is one of the most hazardous countries in Europe and several moderate to strong earthquakes occurred since the early 1970s, when an early stage strong motion monitoring began. During the past 30 years strong motion dataweremainly collected by the italian strong motion network, initially managed by the Italian electricity company and then by the Italian civil protection, and by several regional strong-motion networks, installed in late 1990s.After three decades of monitoring the Italian strong motion patrimony has become relevant, and the need of an organized strong-motion archive, accessible on the world wide web has turned out to be vital. This special issue of the Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering contains nine articles with the aim of illustrating to the scientific community the progress achieved in Italy in the field of strong motion monitoring and strong motion data archiving and dissemination.