ITACA (ITalian ACcelerometric Archive): a Web Portal for the Dissemination of the Italian Strong Motion Data

Abstract

The Italian strong-motion database contains 2182 three component waveforms generated by 1004 earthquakes with a maximum magnitude of 6.9 (1980 Irpinia earthquake) covering the period range from 1972 to 2004. The database is devoted to serving the seismological and engineering communities. The database can be accessed on-line at the site http://itaca.mi.ingv.it, where a wide range of search tools enables the user to interactively search events, recording stations and retrieve waveforms with particular characteristics, whose parameters can be specified, as needed, through a graphical user interface. A range of display options allows users to view data in different contexts, extract and download time series and spectral data. The database was created during a joint project between Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV, Italian institute for geophysics and vulcanology) and Dipartimento della Protezione Civile (DPC, Italian civil protection). The aim of the project was the collection, homogenization and distribution of data acquired over the time period 1972-2004 in Italy by different Italian institutions, namely Ente Nazionale per l’Energia Elettrica (ENEL, Italian electricity company), Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l’Energia e l’Ambiente (ENEA, Italian energy and environment organization) and DPC. The project had multiple purposes, such as permanent strong motion monitoring and temporary monitoring during seismic sequences or before permanent installation. This database brings up to date the ENEA strong motion data collection which ended in 1993 and the European database where the most recent Italian data pertain to the Umbria-Marche sequence of 1997-1998 (Ambraseys at al., 2002). In addition effort was spent reviewing strong motion metadata and data processing to increase data quality and reliability. This article describes the steps that led to the completion of the project and provides an overview of the search capabilities available at the database interface website.