Surface wave surveys for seismic site characterization of accelerometric stations in ITACA

This paper reports on site characterization for a set of accelerometric stations of the RAN (Italian accelerometric network) with specific attention to the shear wave velocity profile. The latter is indeed of primary importance for the usability of the accelerometric database. Surface wave analysis has been chosen as the primary investigation method since it offers the possibility of reaching the required accuracy with reasonable costs. A range of different techniques, both of the active-source and passive-source types, has been adopted to cope with the objectives of the characterization in relation to specific geological settings. Quality assessment of experimental data has been implemented to check the consistency of the measurements also with respect to the fundamental hypotheses of the method. Strategies to improve the reliability and robustness of the surface wave data inversion were exploited in order to mitigate problems arising from solution non-uniqueness and influence of higher modes in the propagation. Comparisons with independent borehole tests, available at some specific sites, confirm the reliability of the results. Although the research program covered only a subset of the network, the obtained results show the importance of specific experimental investigations aimed at estimating the shear wave velocity profile. Indeed the results lead to a re-classification of several sites with respect to the preliminary classification based on surface geology. Within this context, four selected case histories are reported in the present paper.