Abstract The International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks has established the fdsnws-station application programming interface (API) standard for read-only access to seismic station metadata, provided primarily in an extensible markup language (XML) format called StationXML. Here, we present an extension of the standard API that introduces controlled operations for interacting with the underlying metadata repository. The proposed interface is designed to support direct handling of StationXML documents within distributed service-oriented infrastructures. We implemented the extended API using a framework that provides a native XML database management system and an embedded application platform. This approach offers a design advantage because the schema-less database allows ingestion of metadata from heterogeneous sources while preserving the XML structure. The software implementation, exist-fdsn-station, is containerized and can be integrated as a reusable component within larger infrastructures. Performance tests show that the system scales predictably with the size of the returned data and can support large aggregated metadata collections. The software is currently used in operational environments at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) data center, including the public fdsnws-station endpoint.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the prevalence of oceans and the difficulty of access to land result in reduced coverage of seismological stations, limiting our detailed knowledge of Earth 's structures and of large earthquakes sources. This situation is exacerbated inside the antarctic continent, where only two permanent seismic stations are currently available (IU.QSPA at South Pole and G.CCD). The CCD station, built in early 2000s with state -of -theart surface instrumentation and located at the French -Italian Concordia base (75 degrees S, 123 degrees E), has been providing seismological data since 2008. However, it suffers from several problems: the vault is deformed by the hydrostatic pressure of the snow, the firn waveguide traps anthropogenic noise from the base causing strong noise below 1 s, and a coupling defect limits the performance above 30 s on the horizontal channels. To ensure the continuity of CCD and to improve its overall performance, we started in 2014 to plan the installation of a borehole seismometer at the site. In this article, we describe in detail this renovation of CCD and some examples of data analysis. The new borehole sensor shows that short -period disturbances are largely attenuated ( -20 dB at 0.1 s) compared to the surface installation and that the horizontal channels have a lower noise level at long periods ( -8 dB at 100 s). Data for all components are below the standard noise model between 0.1 and 0.2 s, which makes this sensor one of the quietest installations in the world for this bandwidth. For periods > 600 s we observe atmospheric pressure-related perturbations on the vertical component. Despite this problem, the new CCD borehole station is a success with better-than-expected performances at all periods < 600 s. The data produced are now distributed in the world 's data centers as G.CCD.20 and we encourage the scientific community to use the data for all studies requiring seismograms from Antarctica.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the prevalence of the oceans and the difficulty of access to land result in a lack of coverage of seismological station which is a strong limitation Our knowledge of the Earth’s structures and of large earthquakes sources. This is particularly critical inside the Antarctic continent where only two permanent seismological stations are currently available (QSPA and CCD). Among them, the seismological station CCD is a joint program between EOST (Strasbourg) and INGV (Roma) and is installed at the Concordia scientific base (75°S 123°E). This observatory, built in 2000 with state-of-the-art surface instrumentation installed in a vault made of snow-covered containers, meets the required quality criteria and has been part of the GEOSCOPE network since 2008. However, it has become necessary to replace this installation for safety reasons, recurring snow coverage issues and seismological performances. The existing seismic vault is deformed by the hydrostatic pressure of the snow. Its proximity to the base causes strong daytime noise (~30 dB) at high frequencies (>1 Hz); the unconsolidated layer of snow about 100m thick forms a waveguide that traps anthropogenic noise from the base. In addition, a coupling defect of the instruments in contact with the snow limits the performance at low frequencies (< 0.03 Hz) on the horizontal channels.Eight years ago, we proposed to install a borehole seismometer at a depth of 120m to limit the waveguide effects. A new shelter on stilt and the borehole drilling were carried out in 2018/2019. The installation of all the instrumentation has been completed by our team in January 2020. The analyses of the data show that the high-frequency disturbances are very largely attenuated (-30 dB at 10 Hz) compared to the surface installation and that the horizontal channels have a lower noise level at low frequencies (-20 dB at 0.01Hz). In addition, data for all components are below the standard noise model for frequencies between 5 and 9Hz, which already makes this new station one of the quietest installations in the world for those frequencies. A few problems remain to be solved, such as atmospheric pressure-related perturbations for periods longer than 600s on the vertical component. We are currently implementing several patches to try to better insulate the borehole. Updates will be presented during the meeting. Despite this problem at long period, the new CCD borehole stations is a success with better-than-expected performances at all periods shorter than 500s. The data produced are now distributed in the world data centers as G.CCD.20.

The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) is an Italian research institution with focus on earth sciences. Moreover, the INGV is the operational center for seismic surveillance and earthquake monitoring in Italy and is a part of the civil protection system as a center of expertise on seismic, volcanic, and tsunami risks.INGV operates the Italian National Seismic Network and other networks at national scale and is a primary node of the European Integrated Data Archive for archiving and distributing strong motion and weak-motion seismic recordings. In the control room in Rome, INGV staff performs seismic surveillance and tsunami warning services; in Catania and Naples, the control rooms are devoted to volcanic surveillance. Volcano monitoring includes locating earthquakes in the regions around the Sicilian (Etna, Eolian Islands, and Pantelleria) and the Campanian (Vesuvius, Campi Fregrei, and Ischia) active volcanoes. The tsunami warning is based on earthquake location and magnitude (M) evaluation for moderate to large events in the Mediterranean region and also around the world. The technologists of the institute tuned the data acquisition system to accomplish, in near real time, automatic earthquake detection, hypocenter and magnitude determination, and evaluation of several seismological products (e.g., moment tensors and ShakeMaps). Database archiving of all parametric results is closely linked to the existing procedures of the INGV seismic surveillance environment and surveillance procedures. Earthquake information is routinely revised by the analysts of the Italian seismic bulletin. INGV provides earthquake information to the Department of Civil Protection (Dipartimento di Protezione Civile) to the scientific community and to the public through the web and social media. We aim at illustrating different aspects of earthquake monitoring at INGV: (1) network operations; (2) organizational structure and the hardware and software used; and (3) communication, including recent developments and planned improvements.

the dissemination of seismological waveform data and ensures access to 12 regional seismological data centers?the EIDA nodes. The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) is one of the founding partners of this EIDA federation and manages the EIDA data distribution node in Italy. INGV has actively managed the smaller MedNet archive since 1990 and adopted a more comprehensive and systematic approach to seismological data archiving since 2007. The Italian EIDA node data archive currently totals 90 TBytes of waveform data available for download, originating from 25 networks and 974 stations, provided by INGV, MedNet, or contributed by various partner institutions. Geographically, it covers mainly Italy and some stations from the Mediterranean region. The archive is currently growing at a rate of approximately 11 TB/yr. INGV recently strengthened its data management capabilities, resources, and infrastructure to effectively respond to the growing scale of station inventory, archive, and volumes of delivered data, and to acknowledge increasing attention toward open data sharing, appropriate attribution, and FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse), as well as higher demands on data quality and expectations of the scientific user community. To this end, it established a dedicated internal unit in charge of all relevant activities related to the Italian EIDA node. In this article, we address key aspects of the EIDA node in Italy such as evolution and status of the seismological waveform archive, and we describe the technical, organizational, and operational setup of data and service management. We also outline ongoing activities and future evolutions aiming to further increase the quality of services, data availability, data and metadata quality, resilience, and sustainability.

The Orfeus European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA) provides a federated approach to the dissemination of seismological waveform data and ensures access to 12 regional seismological data centers—the EIDA nodes. The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) is one of the founding partners of this EIDA federation and manages the EIDA data distribution node in Italy. INGV has actively managed the smaller MedNet archive since 1990 and adopted a more comprehensive and systematic approach to seismological data archiving since 2007. The Italian EIDA node data archive currently totals 90 TBytes of waveform data available for download, originating from 25 networks and 974 stations, provided by INGV, MedNet, or contributed by various partner institutions. Geographically, it covers mainly Italy and some stations from the Mediterranean region. The archive is currently growing at a rate of approximately 11 TB/yr. INGV recently strengthened its data management capabilities, resources, and infrastructure to effectively respond to the growing scale of station inventory, archive, and volumes of delivered data, and to acknowledge increasing attention toward open data sharing, appropriate attribution, and FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse), as well as higher demands on data quality and expectations of the scientific user community. To this end, it established a dedicated internal unit in charge of all relevant activities related to the Italian EIDA node. In this article, we address key aspects of the EIDA node in Italy such as evolution and status of the seismological waveform archive, and we describe the technical, organizational, and operational setup of data and service management. We also outline ongoing activities and future evolutions aiming to further increase the quality of services, data availability, data and metadata quality, resilience, and sustainability.

The European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA) is the infrastructure that provides access to the seismic-waveform archives collected by European agencies. This distributed system is managed by Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology. EIDA provides seamless access to seismic data from 12 data archives across Europe by means of standard services, exposing data on behalf of hundreds of network operators and research organizations. More than 12,000 stations from permanent and temporary networks equipped with seismometers, accelerometers, pressure sensors, and other sensors are accessible through the EIDA federated services. A growing user base currently counting around 3000 unique users per year has been requesting data and using EIDA services. The EIDA system is designed to scale up to support additional new services, data types, and nodes. Data holdings, services, and user numbers have grown substantially since the establishment of EIDA in 2013. EIDA is currently active in developing suitable data management approaches for new emerging technologies (e.g., distributed acoustic sensing) and challenges related to big datasets. This article reviews the evolution of EIDA, the current data holdings, and service portfolio, and gives an outlook on the current developments and the future envisaged challenges.

Starting in 1988, with the installation of the first broadband (BB) instrument in Italy, the Mediterranean Very Broadband Seismographic Network (MedNet) program established a backbone network of BB stations of the highest quality in the Mediterranean Sea countries. The Mediterranean region is characterized by relevant and frequent seismicity related to its complex tectonics, due to the convergence of two major plates, Africa and Eurasia, and the involvement of other minor plates, as the Adriatic plate. Therefore, the MedNet project became a scientific research infrastructure of excellence, able to fill the gap of regional coverage when the availability of seismic BB instruments was still scarce. The main characteristics of the MedNet network are the highest quality of the seismographic instrumentation at remote sites and very low level of anthropogenic noise with stable conditions of pressure and temperature. After 30 yr of recordings, the MedNet program has proven that the early adoption of very BB instruments in selected sites have been the best choice. A large number of studies benefited from MedNet data, as seismic source computation and Earth structure reconstruction, at local and global scale. We present a concise overview of the contribution given by MedNet data in the last three decades to motivate and financially support the existence of this valuable infrastructure, and to further maintain this project.

At 01:36:32 UTC on August 24, 2016 an earthquake of magnitude 6.0 occurred in Central Italy, affecting many small towns and municipalities in the Lazio, Umbria, Marche and Abruzzo regions. The event caused severe damages, many victims and 299 fatalities. Only 21 seconds after the beginning of the earthquake, the first automatic location of this earthquake was available and stored in our earthquakes database. The first magnitude estimate followed 68 seconds after the origin time. Few seconds later the INGV seismologists on duty in accordance to the agreed protocols provided the first alert to the Italian Civil Protection Department (Dipartimento di Protezione Civile, DPC) and thereby triggered the seismic emergency protocol. Subsequently, they elaborated the data in order to produce the first manually reviewed hypocenter, which was published on the Institute’s website at 01:53:18 UTC. The sequence following this mainshock generated thousands of earthquakes in the epicentral area, which the INGV automated localization system processed and detected along with the usual seismic activity in the rest of the Italian territory. In this paper we analyze the behavior of the automated system and of the data lifecycle management procedures in such extraordinary conditions. In particular we want to measure the capability of the system to manage the huge data flow, in terms of frequency and size of seismic events and its ability to remain fairly responsive and accurate in accomplishing its duty in the expected time. This will help us to identify potential problems and to suggest necessary improvements to better serve the INGV mission for Civil Protection.

At 01:36 UTC (03:36 local time) on August 24th 2016, an earthquake Mw 6.0 struck an extensive sector of the central Apennines (coordinates: latitude 42.70° N, longitude 13.23° E, 8.0 km depth). The earthquake caused about 300 casualties and severe damage to the historical buildings and economic activity in an area located near the borders of the Umbria, Lazio, Abruzzo and Marche regions. The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) located in few minutes the hypocenter near Accumoli, a small town in the province of Rieti. In the hours after the quake, dozens of events were recorded by the National Seismic Network (Rete Sismica Nazionale, RSN) of the INGV, many of which had a ML > 3.0. The density and coverage of the RSN in the epicentral area meant the epicenter and magnitude of the main event and subsequent shocks that followed it in the early hours of the seismic sequence were well constrained. However, in order to better constrain the localizations of the aftershock hypocenters, especially the depths, a denser seismic monitoring network was needed. Just after the mainshock, SISMIKO, the coordinating body of the emergency seismic network at INGV, was activated in order to install a temporary seismic network integrated with the existing permanent network in the epicentral area. From August the 24th to the 30th, SISMIKO deployed eighteen seismic stations, generally six components (equipped with both velocimeter and accelerometer), with thirteen of the seismic station transmitting in real-time to the INGV seismic monitoring room in Rome. The design and geometry of the temporary network was decided in consolation with other groups who were deploying seismic stations in the region, namely EMERSITO (a group studying site-effects), and the emergency Italian strong motion network (RAN) managed by the National Civil Protection Department (DPC). Further 25 BB temporary seismic stations were deployed by colleagues of the British Geological Survey (BGS) and the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh in collaboration with INGV. All data acquired from SISMIKO stations, are quickly available at the European Integrated Data Archive (EIDA). The data acquired by the SISMIKO stations were included in the preliminary analysis that was performed by the Bollettino Sismico Italiano (BSI), the Centro Nazionale Terremoti (CNT) staff working in Ancona, and the INGV-MI, described below.

The Montello anticline is a morphotectonic feature of the east pede-mountain of the South Alpine Chain in northern Italy, which lies ca. 40km northwest of Venice, Italy. The purpose of this study is to characterize the present-day crustal deformation and seismotectonics of the Montello area through multi-parametric geophysical observations. We used new data obtained from the installation of a temporary network of 12 seismic stations and 6 GPS sites. The GPS observations indicate that there is ~1mm/yr shortening across the Montello thrust. Sites located north of the Montello thrust front deviate from the ~NNW-ward Adria–Eurasia convergence direction, as they are constrained by a relative rotation pole in northwestern Italy that has a NNE-ward motion trend. Over 18months, seismographic recordings allowed us to locate 142 local seismic events with Ml 0.5–3.5 with good reliability (rms<0.5). After cross-correlation analysis, we classified 42 of these events into six clusters, with cross-correlation thresholds >0.80. The source focal solutions indicate that: (i) there is thrusting seismic activity on the basal, sub-horizontal, portion of the Montello structure; and (ii) strike-slip source kinematics prevail on the western edge of the Montello hill. Our observations on the source mechanisms and the measured crustal deformation confirm that the Montello thrust is tectonically active.

Advanced application environments for seismic analysis help geoscientists to execute complex simulations to predict the behaviour of a geophysical system and potential surface observations. At the same time data collected from seismic stations must be processed comparing recorded signals with predictions. The EU-funded project VERCE ( http://verce.eu/ ) aims to enable specific seismological use-cases and, on the basis of requirements elicited from the seismology community, provide a service-oriented infrastructure to deal with such challenges. In this paper we present VERCE’s architecture, in particular relating to forward and inverse modelling of Earth models and how the, largely file-based, HPC model can be combined with data streaming operations to enhance the scalability of experiments. We posit that the integration of services and HPC resources in an open, collaborative environment is an essential medium for the advancement of sciences of critical importance, such as seismology.