Source identification for situational awareness of the August 24th 2016 Central Italy event

Abstract

On August 24, 2016, at 01:36 UTC a ML 6.0 earthquake struck a portion of the Central Apennines between the towns of Norcia and Amatrice. The epicentre was located near the town of Accumoli. Prompt Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) acquisitions and the available scientific knowledge of the area allowed to elaborate a first interpretative framework of the ongoing seismic sequence only 30 hours after the mainshock and a second analysis, complete of several Interferometric SAR (InSAR) data within two weeks. Through the inversion of InSAR data, we found that the seismogenic structure is oriented NNW-SSE and extends about 20 km between the towns of Norcia and Amatrice with a width of about 10 km. The retrieved slip reaches a maximum value of more than 1.2 m, and stops at a depth of about 4 km. Preliminary fault slip inversions suggest two main patches of co-seismic deformation located NW and SE of the hypocenter.