The Influence of Cumulative Intensity on Macroseismic Source Parameters: The Case of 2016–2017 and 1703 Seismic Sequences (Central Italy)

Abstract

The macroseismic source parameters of earthquakes occurring within a sequence are strongly influenced by cumulative damage effects. When we deal with historical seismic sequences, in addition to the cumulative intensities, other intrinsic uncertainties due to the scarcity and indeterminacy of sources come into play. These issues imply that the parameterizations of the single earthquakes within a historical seismic sequence are not univocal and that all the uncertainties that are addressed when assessing macroseismic intensity should be carefully considered in the parameter estimation. In the light of these considerations, we performed some tests on the 2016–2017 and 1703 seismic sequences, which occurred in the same area in central Italy, to compute the macroseismic source parameters by means of two independent methods. Results show that the cumulative effects arising from multiple damaging earthquakes can cause biases in the intensity assessments, which affect the computed magnitude and epicentral locations. To reduce bias in macroseismic intensities due to cumulative damage, we illustrate a simple procedure, called cumulative intensity subtraction (CIS), which consists in discarding the localities strongly damaged by the early earthquakes of a sequence from the intensity distributions used for computing the macroseismic source parameters of the subsequent earthquakes. The outcomes show that, for the 2016 seismic sequence, the CIS approach provides locations in agreement with the instrumental epicenters and with the causative faults. For the 1703 sequence, the CIS approach along with explicit accounting for the indeterminacy in intensity assignments give a range of equally plausible solutions. The CIS represents an exploration of a simple strategy that stems from an attempt to give significance to macroseismic intensity in the presence of cumulative damage.