A key element for assessing seismic hazard and risk is the availability of a comprehensive dataset on past earthquakes. Here we present the rationale, structure and contents of CFTI5Med (10.6092/ingv.it-cfti5), the 2018 version of the Catalogue of Strong Earthquakes in Italy: a large multidisciplinary effort including historians, seismologists and geologists. It was conceived in 1989, following the inception of GIS technology, and first published in 1995 to offer a full account of Italy’s strongest earthquakes, of their territorial impact and associated social and economic upheaval. Subsequent versions (1997, 2000, 2007) entailed a fine tuning of research methodologies, included additional research on Italian earthquakes, and were extended to large earthquakes of the Mediterranean area. CFTI5Med comprised an opportunity to streamline the structure of the Catalogue database and propose a renovated user interface. The new front-end (1) grants an easier, intuitive access to the data, including earthquake effects on the environment, and (2) allows all data to be displayed jointly with relevant topographic, geological and seismological overlays published as web services.
The Southern Apennines chain is related to the west‐dipping subduction of the Apulian lithosphere. The strongest seismic events mostly occurred in correspondence of the chain axis along normal NW–SE striking faults parallel to the chain axis. These structures are related to mantle wedge upwelling beneath the chain. In the foreland, faulting develops along E–W strike‐slip to oblique‐slip faults related to the roll‐back of the foreland. Similarly to other historical events in Southern Apennines, the I0 = XI (MCS intensity scale) 23 July 1930 earthquake occurred between the chain axis and the thrust front without surface faulting. This event produced more than 1400 casualties and extensive damage elongated approximately E‐W. The analysis of the historical waveforms provides the chance to study the fault geometry of this “anomalous” event and allow us to clarify its geodynamic significance. Our results indicate that the MS = 6.6 1930 event nucleated at 14.6 ± 3.06 km depth and ruptured a north dipping, N100°E striking plane with an oblique motion. The fault propagated along the fault strike 32 km to the east at about 2 km/s. The eastern fault tip is located in proximity of the Vulture volcano. The 1930 hypocenter, similarly to the 1990 (MW = 5.8) Southern Apennines event, is within the Mesozoic carbonates of the Apulian foredeep and the rupture developed along a “blind” fault. The 1930 fault kinematics significantly differs from that typical of large Southern Apennines earthquakes, which occur in a distinct seismotectonic domain on late Pleistocene to Holocene outcropping faults. These results stress the role played by pre‐existing, “blind” faults in the Apennines subduction setting.
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