The first stations of the Friuli Venezia Giulia (NE Italy) Accelerometric Network (RAF) were installed during 1993–1995 by the Department of Earth Sciences,University of Trieste (DST) (now Department of Mathematics and Geosciences (DMG)) in the framework of international scientific projects. Until 1999 the network was operated by DST in co-operation with ENEL-Ingegneria e Costruzioni. From the beginning the network has been equipped with digital, three-component instruments GMT time synchronized, mostly installed in small electricity transformer buildings. In November 1999 the collaboration between DST and ENEL ended due to the internal reorganization of the ENEL group. As a consequence, at the end of 1999, the configuration of the network changed. New more appropriate free-field sites were found near the original ones. RAF is today configured to record accelerations at several important sites in the seismic area of Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) and near its borders with Slovenia and Austria. Its geometry has been studied taking into account the locations of stations belonging to other seismological agencies and networks operating in the neighbouring countries and in Italy.The RAF stations allow real-time or near-real-time data transmission to the seismological datacenters and to the Friuli Venezia Giulia Direction of the Civil Defence (FVG-DPC) headquarters. As a consequence the accelerations recorded at each site are immediately available after the earthquake occurrence.


RAF93002In the year 2000, DST and the FVG-DPC signed an agreement for the RAF management and its use, not only for scientific studies, but also for civil defence purposes, like the prompt estimate after an earthquake occurrence of the related damage level and its areal extent, the emergency management, the reconstruction planning, and the validation and updating of seismic hazard maps. Moreover, RAF recordings are used also for civil defence prevention purposes. This is accomplished through the computation of possible ground-shaking scenarios, studies of seismic source properties, site effects estimates and microzonation analyses. In particular, for what concerns the estimation of site effects, some of the RAF accelerometric stations have been installed at sites characterized by peculiar Quaternary geological features that produce significant amplifications of seismic signals. Furthermore, classical earthquake parameters, like hypocentral coordinates and magnitude are immediately available at the FVG-DPC headquarters. The occurrence of an earthquake is announced to the FVG-DPC operators by SMS, e-mail and automatically generated WEB pages.

GEDESince 2003 an agreement between the National Civil Defence (DPC) and FVG-DPC has been signed in order to co-ordinate and integrate on the FVG territory the national accelerometric network (Rete accelerometrica nazionale-RAN) and RAF. This cooperation will lead to the installation of new RAN accelerometric stations in the area and, in particular, will allow to automatically sending RAN and RAF data to the DPC headquarters in Rome, through the FVG-DPC data center. Thanks to a scientific agreement between the DPC and the SeisRaM group of the DMG, since 2011 the RAF is fully integrated in the RAN. The RAF data are transmitted directly to the DPC datacenter in Rome (CAED). The SeisRaM group manage the RAN accelerometric stations in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region.

In the framework of the same agreement, the SeisRaM group give support to DPC in the acquisition software management and fast strong  motion data analsys for Civil Defence purposes.

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