Suhaldoc, Peter

In the period 2002-2006 the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale (OGS) in Udine (Italy), the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna (Austria), the Dipartimento di Geoscienze (DiG) of the Trieste University in Trieste (Italy), the Agencija Republike Slovenije za okolje (ARSO) in Ljubljana (Slovenia) and the Protezione Civile della Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia (PCFVG) in Palmanova (Italy) were involved in the EU INTERREG IIIA project “Seismological Networks Without Frontiers in the Southeastern Alps”. ZAMG is involved in the EU INTERREG IIIA project “FASTLINK”, together with the Protezione Civile della Provincia autonoma di Bolzano (Italy) and the ETH of Zurigo (Swizerland). The commercial Antelope-software suite from BRTT (Boulder Real Time Technologies - www.brtt.com) has been chosen as the common basis for real time data exchange, rapid location of earthquakes and alerting. Each institute contributes to the seismological monitoring in the South-Eastern Alps by sharing data from its seismic network. Antelope is a powerful software suite that easily allows sharing data in real-time among several institutions by means of its module ‘orb2orb’. The current Antelope setup of all institutions involved in data acquisition, sharing and archiving is described, together with the future evolution of the project. The border region of Slovenia, Austria and NE Italy has experienced several destructive earthquakes in the past. Different seismic networks are operating in the area supporting monitoring, alerting and research. The example of recent strong earthquakes demonstrated that the integration of services provided by the neighboring networks is essential for a rapid and efficient intervention.

A hybrid technique, based on mode summation and finite differences, was used to silnulate the ground motion induced in the city of Rome by possible earthquakes occurring in the main seisrnogenetic areas surrounding the city: the Central Apennines and the Alban Hills. The results of the numerical simulations are used for a seismic inicrozonation in the city of Rome, which can be used for the retrofitting of buildings of special social and cultural value. On the basis of our analysis Rome can be divided into six main zones: (1) the edges and (2) the central part of the alluvial basin of the River Tiber; (3) the edges and (4) the central part of the Paleotiber basin; the areas outside the large basins of the Tiber and Paleotiber, where we distinguish between (5) areas without, and (6) areas with a layer of volcanic rocks close to the surface. The strongest amplification effects have to be expected at the edges of the Tiber basin, with maximum spectral amplification of the order of 5 to 6, and strong arnplifications occur inside the entire alluvial basin of the Tiber. The presence of a near-surface layer of rigid material is not sufficient to classify a location as a <> when the rigid material covers a sedimentary complex. The reason is that the underlying sedimentary complex causes amplifications at the surface due to resonance effects. This phenomenon can be observed in the Paleotiber basin, where spectral amplifications in the frequency range 0.4-1.0 Hz reach values of the order of 3 to 4.