On 24 August 2016, at 3.36 am, with a 6.0 magnitude earthquake near Amatrice, one of the most important seismic sequences that hit the national territory in this century, 140 municipalities and about 600 thousand people involved, began.
After 5 years, the president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (Ingv), Carlo Doglioni, photographs the state of the art in the study of earthquakes in Italy.
"It is important to remember earthquakes - explains Doglioni - because our brain instead tends to want to remove the memory of tragedies, while the memory of these terrible events helps us to implement all possible defensive strategies from future events that will inevitably return. ".
The 2016 Amatrice seismic sequence
According to President Ingv, there are two weapons at our disposal: improving scientific knowledge and spreading the culture of prevention.
In Italy there are on average 20-25 destructive earthquakes per century, so according to the statistics it is reasonable to expect an event every 4-5 years.
The damage analysis after the earthquakes of 26 and 30 October in central Italy conducted by QuEST (Quick Earthquake Survey Team)
"We are not able to predict where and when the next seismic event will be for the sole reason that we still do not sufficiently know all the parameters and physical conditions that lead to the enucleation of an earthquake. We do know, however, that this objective is possible: it is a question of studying and extensively measuring everything that the Earth allows us to measure: variations in seismicity, aquifers, modifications in the subsoil of the speed of seismic waves, variations in speed between GPS stations and more ". For this reason, Doglioni continues, a lot is being invested in monitoring networks which, thanks also to artificial intelligence and the use of large computing systems, will perhaps allow us to have reliable forecast estimates over time.
The source fault of the Amatrice earthquake visualized in 3D
"The monitoring networks - adds the president Ingv - are the research infrastructures that represent our 'telescopes' pointing towards the center of the Earth and which allow us to observe its behavior".
"For me - he concludes - the Amatrice event was a painful whiplash from a human point of view but, as a scientist, a strong stimulus to study the origin of earthquakes with ever greater determination".
Animation of the earthquake of Accumoli (Rieti) of 24 August 2016
Space-time animation seismic sequence in Central Italy
Space-time animation of the seismic sequence in Central Italy
Photo gallery of geological effects 24/8/2016
Amatrice-Visso-Norcia sequence
