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INTRODUCTION

Italy can boast a long as well as prestigious tradition in instrumental earthquake observation and for the past 20 years INGV has promoted two important projects for research, recovery, reproduction, conservation and development of this outstanding historical and scientific heritage: the TROMOS Project (1988 – 2007) and the SISMOS Project (1999 - )

At present, the oldest recovered recordings date back to 1895 and these were recorded in the Observatory of the Grande Sentinella of Casamicciola (Ischia).

Founded in 1988 the TROMOS project is oriented to research, recovery, restoration, reproduction and scientific and cultural valorisation of the historical assets of the instrumental observation of earthquakes in Italy.

Originally, SISMOS was a group of INGV whose job was to digitally preserve the historical histograms and the complementary documentation, along with honing tools for the use of the historical seismographic data.

A recent reorganisation of SISMOS integrates the “philosophies” of the two projects in a single multidisciplinary and multicultural and consequently multi-user approach.

Hence, today, attention is drawn to the historical assets of Italian seismology both as scientific data and as cultural heritage.

A major effort is currently being made to intervene in the different sectors (scientific, historical, cultural and popular dissemination) with the disciplinary rigour of the different disciplines and synergies involved as compared with analogous initiatives at the national and the international level. With the EuroSeismos project which started in 2002, in collaboration with the WG History and data of instrumental seismology of ESC, the experience and the technologies of SISMOS have allowed us to broaden the “user base” of the project to the whole Euro-Mediterranean area.
Finally, since spring 2006 SISMOS has become part of the facilities of the European project NERIES.

The main SISMOS products available from this site or upon request are:

* digital images of the paper seismograms;

* digital images of the historical seismic bulletins;

* software for the raster analysis of the seismograms;

* digital data of the selected seismograms;

* alphanumeric data of the historical seismic bulletins.

Graziano Ferrari Chief of Sismos