Francesco Giorgetti

Forty years have passed since the terrible earthquake that destroyed central Friuli (north-eastern Italy) in 1976. Since then many things have changed in almost all fi elds of Science as well as in the social life; it is our conviction that it is worth to maintain the memory of that event nevertheless, because it initiated a fruitful design of seismic risk reduction. This volume aims at collecting a summary of what our scientifi community and administrative boards have learnt in fi elds of seismology, engineering, communication, and management from the 1976 event. In this occasion, we wish to remember the late Francesco Giorgetti, who had the diffi cult task to coordinate the seismological work and to manage the information dissemination during the seismic crisis. Many thanks are due to D. Albarello, P.M. Alves, A. Amato, R. Camassi, R. Caputo, M. Crescimbene, D. Kaiser, V. Kouskouna, G. Mirabella-Roberti, R. Musson, L. Peruzza, V. Petrini, M.E. Poli, G. Santarsiero, and M. Santulin, who acted as reviewers for the papers of this volume and to S. Conway, who checked all English manuscripts.