Real-Time Determination of Seismic Moment Tensor for the Italian Region

Abstract

We describe the automatic (AUTO) and the reviewed (REV) seismic time-domain moment tensor (TDMT) procedures implemented recently at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Italy. The solutions are obtained from the high-quality data of the recently installed Italian broadband network and of the Mediterranean seismographic network (MedNet). AUTO- and REV-TDMT adopt the long-period full waveform inversion code developed by Dreger and Helmberger (1993). AUTO-TDMT is triggered by local and regional events with magnitude ML ≥ 3.5 detected by the INGV seismic center.Moment tensor solutions are available within about 10 min after earthquake location, and they are automatically published on the World Wide Web for solution qualities exceeding a predefined threshold. REV-TDMT solutions are posted on the World Wide Web and included in the INGV-TDMT catalog after manual revision. The catalog we describe has great potential to improve our understanding of the regional seismicity and of the ongoing tectonics because the TDMT solutions are the only moment tensors and moment magnitudes released for Italy for many of the events with ML ≤4.2.