Implementation of a seismic monitoring network of relevant and strategic public buildings in the Marche region (Italy)

Abstract

A seismic monitoring infrastructure for relevant and strategic public buildings has been developed thanks to the agreement between the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) and Marche Region. The project was founded by European projects for the assessment of seismic risk for strategic public buildings, prevention and monitoring - European Territorial Cooperation Project Holistic (EU IPA-Adriatic) and READINESS (INTERREG Italy-Croatia). The project was born by taking advantage of the presence of MEMS accelerometers installed at the base of municipal buildings. The project aims to implement low-cost technologies and non-invasive methods to extend the seismic monitoring of the sites where the structures are located and characterize the seismic action in correspondence of them with a rapid estimate of the damage through relationships between acceleration and macroseismic intensity or fragility curves and construction features. Among the various activities, environmental seismic noise measurements were carried to investigate the fundamental vibration of the structures and soils, semi-automatic procedures were developed for the calculation of the strong motion parameters of seismic events and a web portal was implemented for the collection and rapid dissemination of information to local Civil Protection. An important part of the activities concerned the testing of new MEMS accelerometers through collaboration with the Polytechnic University of Marche (UNIVPM) and the headquarter of the Osservatorio Nazionale Terremoti (ONT) in Palermo. Moreover, new monitoring sites are being prepared in some municipalities affected by the 2016 seismic sequence. Since the beginning of the project, the strong motion parameters relating to 95 seismic events of magnitude greater than 3 and with ground motion accelerations greater than or equal to 0.001 g have been stored in the database.