Historical seismometry database project: A comprehensive relational database for historical seismic records

The recovery and preservation of the patrimony made of the instrumental registrations regarding the historical
earthquakes is with no doubt a subject of great interest. This attention, besides being purely historical, must necessarily be
also scientific. In fact, the availability of a great amount of parametric information on the seismic activity in a given area is
a doubtless help to the seismologic researcher’s activities. In this article the project of the Sismos group of the National
Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology of Rome new database is presented. In the structure of the new scheme the
matured experience of five years of activity is summarized.
We consider it useful for those who are approaching to ‘‘recovery and reprocess’’ computer based facilities. In the past
years several attempts on Italian seismicity have followed each other. It has almost never been real databases. Some of
them have had positive success because they were well considered and organized. In others it was limited in supplying lists
of events with their relative hypocentral standards. What makes this project more interesting compared to the previous
work is the completeness and the generality of the managed information. For example, it will be possible to view the
hypocentral information regarding a given historical earthquake; it will be possible to research the seismograms in raster,
digital or digitalized format, the information on times of arrival of the phases in the various stations, the instrumental
standards and so on. The relational modern logic on which the archive is based, allows the carrying out of all these
operations with little effort. The database described below will completely substitute Sismos’ current data bank.
Some of the organizational principles of this work are similar to those that inspire the database for the real-time
monitoring of the seismicity in use in the principal offices of international research. A modern planning logic in a distinctly
historical context is introduced.
Following are the descriptions of the various planning phases, from the conceptual level to the physical implementation
of the scheme. Each time principle instructions, rules, considerations of technical–scientific nature are highlighted that take
to the final result: a vanguard relational scheme for historical data.