New developments in macroseismic investigation

ABSTRACT

In the last fifteen years, in Europe and throughout the world, a significant amount of resources has been devoted to improve the seismic catalogues, mostly for what macroseismic data are concerned. This has led both to the retrieval of a huge amount of data, and to a general reconsideration of their current use. The answer is most likely "no" for instance, the habit of representing the whole earthquake by its "centre of mass" (to, lat, lon, ho, Io, and so on) is revealin unsatisfactory, as the use of epicentres and attenuation laws is becoming unable to approximate even the starting intensity points. From another points of view, however, it seems possible to develop new ways to exploit macroseismic data, according to the purpose for which they are needed (AU)