The first stations of the FriuliVenezia Giulia (NE Italy)AccelerometricNetwork
(Rete Accelerometrica del Friuli Venezia Giulia—RAF) were installed by the Department of
Earth Sciences, University of Trieste, in the early nineties in the framework of international
scientific projects. Today RAF is configured, taking in to account also other network stations
operating in Italy as well as in Austria and Slovenia, to record accelerations at several
important sites in the seismic area of Friuli Venezia Giulia and near its borders with Slovenia
and Austria. This allows an immediate estimate of peak ground acceleration as well as a
first evaluation of possible damages. In the year 2000, DST and the Friuli Venezia Giulia
Direction of the Civil Defence signed an agreement for the RAF management and its use
for civil defence purposes, like the prompt estimate of the damage level after an earthquake
occurrence, the emergency management, the reconstruction planning, and the validation and
updating of seismic hazard maps. Moreover, RAF recordings are used also for prevention
purposes by the civil defence. This is performed with the computation of real time shake
maps, possible ground-shaking scenarios, studies of the physics of the seismic source, site
effects estimates and microzonation analyses.
