The Database of Individual Seismogenic Sources (DISS), version 3: summarizing 20 years of research on Italy’s earthquake geology

Abstract

This paper describes the main characteristics, the evolution, and the structure of the Database of Individual Seismogenic Sources (DISS) and particularly of its release of early 2007. The Database contains the results of the investigations of the active tectonics in Italy during the past 20 years. The first two sections of this paper document the recent evolution in mapping and archiving Italian active fault data in relation to important achievements in the understanding of Italian tectonics, some of which were spurred by significant earthquakes. The central sections describe the current structure of the Database, the reasons for its assumptions and data categories, its current contents, its evolution through several years of improvements. The last section describes how the current contents of the Database correspond with the existing strain and stress data available from focal mechanism, borehole breakout, and GPS data for the whole of Italy. The Database supplies a fresh and unified view of active and seismogenic processes in Italy by building on basic physical constraints concerning rates of crustal deformation, on the continuity of deformation belts and on the spatial relationships between adjacent faults, both at the surface and at depth.