State of the art on short-term earthquake forecasting and preparation in Italy: a preface

Main outcomes are reported of the first year of activity of the DPC-INGV-S3 project devoted to explore present situation of earthquake forecasting studies in Italy. The general paradigm beyond the project is that earthquakes are part of a large scale process whose ongoing features can only be detected by considering multi-parametric monitoring of large areas carried on for relatively long time spans. The focus of the first year of activity was on the analysis of the state of the art concerning a number of observables potentially of interest: deep fluids piezometry, seismicity, gaseous ground emissions and temperature, electromagnetic perturbations, short-term geodetic deformation and crustal elastic properties. To evaluate the actual heuristic potential of the above observables as expression of ongoing seismogenic processes, the reappraisal and exploitation of significant data sets collected in the past and relative to these were of main concern. Along these features, deterministic and statistical procedures for medium-term earthquake forecasting were also considered as a tool for detecting areas most interesting for future monitoring activity.