SISMIKO: the operational task force for seismic networks rapid deployments and integration in the INGV monitoring system

Abstract

SISMIKO is the operational group within the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia responsible for deploying a temporary seismic network as a rapid response to significant seismic events [Moretti et al., 2023; https://sismiko.ingv.it/]. The purpose of the temporary seismic network is to complement the RSNi (Rete Sismica Nazionale integrata) by reducing the inter-station distances of permanent stations, where necessary. SISMIKO has a distributed structure across various INGV headquarters nationwide and in recent years has equipped itself with a consistent set of around 50 seismo-accelerometric stations and an autonomous acquisition system. This system makes the acquired data available, without restrictions, to the entire scientific community through the Italy node of the European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA [Danecek et al., 2021]) portal, ensuring a high level of data quality. To ensure a rapid response following an earthquake and rapid integration of data collected by emergency stations, a codified procedure has been established. Through this procedure, the metadata of each station is pre-configured and the data flow coming from these stations is collected within an acquisition system [D'Alema et al., 2022]. This setting allows the rapid use, if necessary, of the data obtained by SISMIKO - after a quality control - by the seismologists on duty at the INGV Operations Room [Margheriti et al., 2021]. Today, over 100 INGV personnel join SISMIKO group: technicians, technologists and researchers from each of the headquarters distributed across the national territory. A new configuration in Activity Groups allows to coordinate the distributed personnel and to cover all the aspects in the preparation of the emergency such as the technical management of the instrumentation, the field operations, to maintain contacts with the INGV Crisis Unit and the other Operational Groups and to develop automatic procedures to analyse real time seismic data (Fig 1). Besides the operational aspects, in recent years SISMIKO has promoted the recovery of continuous data recorded by temporary seismic stations installed during past seismic sequences such as in L'Aquila 2009, Po Plain 2012 and Central Italy 2016. By reconstructing the complete station's metadata, it is now possible to distribute the data to the scientific community through the EIDA portal.