Earthquake-induced ground failures in Italy

The National Catalog of Ground Failures Induced by Strong Earthquakes in Italy (CEDIT), is described. The catalog holds data on ground failures triggered by the earthquakes that occurred in Italy in the last millennium and which had a nominal epicentral intensity equal to or greater than VIII in the Mercalli-Cancani-Sieberg (MCS) intensity scale. The ground effects reported in the catalog are the following: landslides, fractures, liquefaction, surface faulting, and topographic changes of the ground level (subsidence, settlements, tilting, and so on). Each effect is described in terms of seismological parameters of the triggering earthquake, site coordinates and administrative code, lithology and kinematic type of the ground failure. The catalog represents a tool to assess the susceptibility of geologic materials to ground shaking, and to validate predictive models of seismically induced ground displacements (scenarios of earthquake-induced geologic risks). In the context of this study, a simple statistical analysis of the database yielded useful relations between the parameters of the triggering earthquakes and the related effects. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.