GNGTS 2021 - Atti del 39° Convegno Nazionale

GNGTS 2021 S essione 2.2 246 MICRO-SEISMICITY MONITORING WITH LOW-COST MEMS SENSORS V. Cascone 1 , J. Boaga 1 , G. Cassiani 1 1 Dipartimento di Geoscienze, Università degli Studi di Padova Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) sensors are low-cost and miniaturized accelerometers with a huge commercial potential (Evans et al., 2014). Several authors demonstrate that these devices could be adopted in seismology and earthquake engineering since they are capable of recording seismic events. In particular, MEMS sensors distributed arrays recorded moderate and strong seismic events (Mw > 5.9) at distances in the order of tens of kilometers (Boaga et al., 2019; Lawrence et al., 2014). However, the potential of such technology is far to be fully explored. In this study we present a new prototype of MEMS sensor, designed and built by the Italian company ADEL. These triaxial accelerometers are characterized by a low instrumental noise and show a good performance on a calibration experiment on the shake table apparatus. Two MEMS sensors arrays were installed in Northern and Central Italy in January 2019. 6 of these sensors are distributed in Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia Regions. 10 of these sensors are located in Umbria Region. These low-cost accelerometers are able to record local seismicity. In the period between January 2020 and May 2021 they recorded 30 seismic events and 16 of them are characterized Fig. 1 - Accelerograms recorded by a triaxial MEMS sensor located in Central Italy. The recorded earthquake is characterized by a ML=1.5 and occurred in Central Italy, near Bastia town.