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It is shown that considering a fixed increment of a given magnitude at a fault is equivalent to factoring the mechanical moment at the fault as done in structural engineering with the applied loads, by the most currently used structural engineering standards (e.g. Eurocodes). A special safety factor is introduced and related to the partial factor acting on the mechanical moment representing the fault. A comparison is then made between the hazard maps obtained for Italy with the Neo Deterministic Seismic Hazard Assessment (NDSHA) technique, using two approaches for the definition of the seismic sources considered for the computation of the synthetic seismograms. The first one is based on the magnitude of the events listed in the earthquake catalogue, and located within the active seismogenic zones. This is the standard approach, used in most of the NDSHA computations performed up to now. It is adequate for countries, like Italy, where the catalogue can be reasonably considered complete for events of M=5 and above. When the catalogue completeness is barely adequate, another approach can be adopted for the definition of the earthquake sources. It uses the seismogenic nodes identified by means of pattern recognition techniques applied to morphostructural seismic zonation (MSZ), and increases the reference magnitude by a constant variation tuned thanks to the safety factor. The two approaches have been compared for Italy using the safety factor 2.0: they mostly produce comparable hazard maps. As the two sets are fully independent and the catalogue is very long, this implies a validation of the seismogenic nodes method and a tuning of the safety factor at about 2. Notable exception is seen in the Central Alps, where nodes tend to overestimate the "observed" hazard, and in southeastern Sicily, where the nodes underestimation is only apparent and can be negligible within experimental errors., Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures

The Neo-Deterministic Seismic Hazard Assessment (NDSHA) method reliably and realistically simulates the suite of earthquake ground motions that may impact civil populations as well as their heritage buildings. The modeling technique is developed from comprehensive physical knowledge of the seismic source process, the propagation of earthquake waves and their combined interactions with site effects. NDSHA effectively accounts for the tensor nature of earthquake ground motions formally described as the tensor product of the earthquake source functions and the Green Functions of the pathway. NDSHA uses all available information about the space distribution of large magnitude earthquake, including Maximum Credible Earthquake (MCE) and geological and geophysical data. It does not rely on scalar empirical ground motion attenuation models, as these are often both weakly constrained by available observations and unable to account for the tensor nature of earthquake ground motion. Standard NDSHA provides robust and safely conservative hazard estimates for engineering design and mitigation decision strategies without requiring (often faulty) assumptions about the probabilistic risk analysis model of earthquake occurrence. If specific applications may benefit from temporal information the definition of the Gutenberg-Richter (GR) relation is performed according to the multi-scale seismicity model and occurrence rate is associated to each modeled source. Observations from recent destructive earthquakes in Italy and Nepal have confirmed the validity of NDSHA approach and application, and suggest that more widespread application of NDSHA will enhance earthquake safety and resilience of civil populations in all earthquake-prone regions, especially in tectonically active areas where the historic earthquake record is too short., Comment: Proceedings, International Conference on Disaster Risk Mitigation, Dhaka, Bangladesh, September 23 - 24, 2017

Seasonal patterns associated with stress modulation, as evidenced by earthquake occurrence, have been detected in regions characterized by present day mountain building and glacial retreat in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Himalaya and the Alps, seismicity is peaking in spring and summer; opposite behaviour is observed in the Apennines. This diametrical behaviour, confirmed by recent strong earthquakes, well correlates with the dominant tectonic regime: peak in spring and summer in shortening areas, peak in fall and winter in extensional areas. The analysis of the seasonal effect is extended to several shortening (e.g. Zagros and Caucasus) and extensional regions, and counter-examples from regions where no seasonal modulation is expected (e.g. Tropical Atlantic Ridge). This study generalizes to different seismotectonic settings the early observations made about short-term (seasonal) and long-term (secular) modulation of seismicity and confirms, with some statistical significance, that snow and ice thaw may cause crustal deformations that modulate the occurrence of major earthquakes., Comment: 15 pages; 8 figures; 3 tables

A scenario-based Neo-Deterministic approach to Seismic Hazard Assessment (NDSHA) is available nowadays, which permits considering a wide range of possible seismic sources as the starting point for deriving scenarios by means of full waveforms modeling. The method does not make use of attenuation relations and naturally supplies realistic time series of ground shaking, including reliable estimates of ground displacement, readily applicable to complete engineering analysis. Based on the neo-deterministic approach, an operational integrated procedure for seismic hazard assessment has been developed that allows for the definition of time dependent scenarios of ground shaking, through the routine updating of earthquake predictions, performed by means of the algorithms CN and M8S. The integrated NDSHA procedure for seismic input definition, which is currently applied to the Italian territory, combines different pattern recognition techniques, designed for the space-time identification of strong earthquakes, with algorithms for the realistic modeling of ground motion. Accordingly, a set of deterministic scenarios of ground motion at bedrock, which refers to the time interval when a strong event is likely to occur within the alerted area, is defined both at regional and local scale. CN and M8S predictions, as well as the related time-dependent ground motion scenarios associated with the alarmed areas, are routinely updated since 2006. The prospective application of the time-dependent NDSHA approach provides information that can be useful in assigning priorities for timely mitigation actions and, at the same time, allows for a rigorous validation of the proposed methodology. The results from real-time testing of the time-dependent NDSHA scenarios are illustrated with specific reference to the August 24th, 2016 Central Italy earthquake., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures. The paper arXiv:1406.2932 provides a basic reference for this report

Velocity structure of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system, to the depth of about 350 km, is obtained for almost 400 cells, sized 1 degree by 1 degree in the Mediterranean region. The models are obtained by the following sequence of methods and tools: surface-wave dispersion measurements and collection; 2D tomography of dispersion relations; non-linear inversion of cellular dispersion relations; smoothing optimization method to select a preferred model for each cell. The 3D velocity model, that satisfies Occam razor principle, is obtained as a juxtaposition of selected cellular models. The reconstructed picture of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system evidences the, globally well known, asymmetry between the W- and E-directed subduction zones, attributed to the westward drift of the lithosphere relative to the mantle. Different relationship between slabs and mantle dynamics cause strong compositional differences in the upper mantle, as shown by large variations of seismic waves velocity, consistent with Polarized Plate Tectonics model., Comment: presented on 8th Congress of the Balkan Geophysical Society, October 4-8 2015, Chania, Crete, Greece

This study defines a 3D shear-wave velocity model to the depth of about 350 km in the region of Balkan Peninsula by application of several methods and tools: collection of surface-wave dispersion measurements; tomography on a grid sized 1 degree by 1 degree; non-linear inversion of dispersion relations; local smoothing optimization; and juxtaposition of representative cellular models. This study upgrades, refines and extends the results obtained for the region by Raykova and Panza (2006), Raykova and Nikolova (2007), Panza et al. (2007) and Brandmayr et al. (2010)., Comment: presented at 7th National Conference of Bulgarian Geophysical Society, May 20-21 2015, Sofia, Bulgaria. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1511.02731

In this paper, a new seismic Performance Based Design (PBD) process based on a deterministic definition of the seismic input is presented. The proposed procedure aims to address the following considerations, arisen from the analysis of seismic phenomena, which cannot be taken in account using standard probabilistic seismic input (PSHA): a) any structure at a given location, regardless of its importance, is subject to the same shaking as a result of a given earthquake, b) it is impossible to determine when a future earthquake of a given intensity/magnitude will occur, c) insufficient data are available to develop reliable statistics with regards to earthquakes. On the basis of these considerations, the seismic input at a given site - determined on the basis of the seismic history, the seismogenic zones and the seismogenic nodes - is defined using the Neo Deterministic Seismic Hazard Assessment (NDSHA). Two different analysis are carried out at different levels of detail. The first one (RSA) provides the Maximum Deterministic Seismic Input as a response spectra at the bedrock (MDSIBD), similarly to what is proposed by the codes. The second one (SSA) takes the site effects into account, providing a site specific seismic input (MDSISS). A SSA provides realistic site specific seismograms that could be used to run time history analysis even where no registrations are available. Reviewing the standard PBD procedure, MDSISS is always associated with the worst structural performance acceptable for a building, called Target Performance Level (TPL). In this way, the importance of the structure (risk category) is taken into account by changing the structural performance level to check rather than to change the seismic input., Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures, to be published in the XVI ANIDIS Conference proceedings (13-17 September 2015, L'Aquila, Italy)

Objective testing is a key issue in the process of revision and improvement of seismic hazard assessments. Therefore we continue the rigorous comparative analysis of past and newly available hazard maps for the territory of Italy against the seismic activity observed in reality. The final Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Program (GSHAP) results and the most recent version of Seismic Hazard Harmonization in Europe (SHARE) project maps, along with the reference hazard maps for the Italian seismic code, all obtained by probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA), are cross-compared to the three ground shaking maps based on the duly physically and mathematically rooted neo-deterministic approach (NDSHA). These eight hazard maps for Italy are tested against the available data on ground shaking. The results of comparison between predicted macroseismic intensities and those reported for past earthquakes (in the time interval from 1000 to 2014 year) show that models provide rather conservative estimates, which tend to over-estimate seismic hazard at the ground shaking levels below the MCS intensity IX. Only exception is represented by the neo-deterministic maps associated with a fixed return period of 475 or 2475 years, which provide a better fit to observations, at the cost of model consistent 10% or 2% cases of exceedance respectively. In terms of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness of fit criterion, although all of the eight hazard maps differ significantly from the distribution of the observed ground shaking reported in the available Italian databases, the NDSHA approach appears to outscore significantly the PSHA one., Comment: Proceedings of the International School and Workshop on *Nonlinear Mathematical Physics and Natural Hazards* (Sofia, Bulgaria - 28 Nov. - 2 Dec. 2013)

In this work we use morphostructural zonation and pattern recognition techniques to identify a potential seismic source located inland very near Venice, and then we evaluate how a tsunami wave generated from this source can affect the MoSE gates if they are standing up (closed) during the tsunami event. From our simulation we get both peaks and troughs as first arrivals: the behavior of the barriers in these two situations could be a very important design matter., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures

The reliable statistical characterization of the spatial and temporal properties of large earthquakes occurrence is one of the most debated issues in seismic hazard assessment, due to the unavoidably limited observations from past events. We show that pattern recognition techniques, which are designed in a formal and testable way, may provide significant space-time constraints about impending strong earthquakes. This information, when combined with physically sound methods for ground shaking computation, like the neo-deterministic approach (NDSHA), may produce effectively preventive seismic hazard maps. Pattern recognition analysis of morphostructural data provide quantitative and systematic criteria for identifying the areas prone to the largest events, taking into account a wide set of possible geophysical and geological data, whilst the formal identification of precursory seismicity patterns (by means of CN and M8S algorithms), duly validated by prospective testing, provides useful constraints about impending strong earthquakes at the intermediate space-time scale. According to a multi-scale approach, the information about the areas where a strong earthquake is likely to occur can be effectively integrated with different observations (e.g. geodetic and satellite data), including regional scale modeling of the stress field variations and of the seismic ground shaking, so as to identify a set of priority areas for detailed investigations of short-term precursors at local scale and for microzonation studies. Results from the pattern recognition of earthquake prone areas (M>=5.0) in the Po plain (Northern Italy), as well as from prospective testing and validation of the time-dependent NDSHA scenarios are presented., Comment: 33 pages, 7 Figures, 9 Tables. Submitted to Bollettino di Geofisica Teorica e Applicata (BGTA)

We propose a critical analysis of the moment tensor solutions of the major seismic events that affected northern Italy in 2012. Inverting full waveforms at regional distance using the non-linear method named INPAR, we investigate period dependent resolution that affects in particular the solutions of shallow events. This is mainly due to the poor resolution of Mzx and Mzy components of the seismic tensor when inverting signals whose wavelengths significantly exceed the source depth. As a consequence, instability affects both source depth and fault plane solution retrieval, and spurious large Compensated Linear Vector Dipole components arise. The inversion performed at cutoff periods shorter than 20 s reveals in many cases different details of the rupture process, that are not resolved inverting at longer cutoff periods. Thus we conclude that inversion of full waveforms at cutoff period as short as possible should be preferred.