Comparing recent Italian earthquakes

A comprehensive comparison among the three strongest earthquakes occurred in Italy in the past 30 years is presented. These three earthquakes struck the regions of Umbria and Marche in 1997, Abruzzo in 2009, and Emilia-Romagna, Lombardia and Veneto in 2012, respectively. They were assigned exactly the same local magnitude, Ml5.9, and comparable focal depths. In spite of having occurred in the same country, these earthquakes displayed considerable differences from both the scientific and the civil protection points of view. Differences can be ascribed to the released energy, the seismotectonic and geomorphological features, as well as the diverse population density, building features and socio-economic conditions that characterize the three epicentral areas. Nevertheless, the overall economic losses come out to be almost the same, although deriving from quite diverse distributions among the different categories of costs. Differences and similarities among the three events are carefully analysed and discussed in the paper.