Seismic hazard in Central Italy and the 2016 Amatrice earthquake

Abstract

The Amatrice earthquake of 24 August 2016 (Mw 6.0) struck an area that in the national reference seismic hazard model (MPS04) is characterized by expected horizontal peak ground acceleration (PGA) with 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years higher than 0.25 g. After the occurrence of moderate-to-large magnitude earthquakes with a strong impact on the population, such as the L’Aquila 2009 and Emilia 2012 ones (Mw 6.1 and 5.9, respectively), possible underestimations of the seismic hazard by MPS04 were investigated, in order to analyze and evaluate the possible need for its update. One of the most common misunderstanding is to compare recorded PGA with the PGA value with 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years only. Moreover, by definition, probabilistic models cannot be validated (or rejected) on the basis of a single event. However, comparisons of forecasted shakings with observed data are useful for understating the consistency of the model. It is then worth highlighting the importance of these comparisons. In fact, MPS04 is the basis for the current Italian building code to provide the effective design procedures and, thus, any modification to the seismic hazard values would also affect the building code. In this paper, comparisons between recorded ground motion during the Amatrice earthquake and seismic hazard estimates are performed, in order to evaluate the consistency between predicted and observed accelerations.