Setting up the Malta Seismic Network : instrumentation, site selection and real-time monitoring

Abstract

The establishment of an enhanced national seismic network for the Maltese islands, and ultimately for the Sicily Channel region, was carried out within the strategic project SIMIT (Costituzione di un Sis- tema Integrato di Protezione Civile Transfrontaliero Italo–Maltese) funded by the Italia–Malta Operational Programme. SIMIT was designed to work towards the establishment of an integrated system for the evaluation, forecasting, prevention and mitigation of losses from geological hazards affecting the Sicily Channel. The project was led by the regional Civil Protection Department (CPD) of Sicily and included the Civil Protection Department of Malta and Universities in the region, and therefore one of its important aspects was the raising and dissemination of the awareness about earthquake hazard and risk in this region. Although the knowledge about seismicity and seismic hazard in Sicily is quite advanced, the same cannot be said about the Maltese islands and other islands in the Sicily Channel. This is a problem that is common to island nations for which the seismicity affecting the countries occurs below the surrounding seas and presents problems in epicentral location, instrumental coverage, near–source effects, etc. Another problem affecting this area is the low–to–moderate level of seismic activity, and the very rare occurrence of large magnitude events in the region, making probabilistic analysis more difficult, and presenting a lack of historical and instrumental data on which to base seismological analyses.