Design of a new prototype of remote station to detect electrical and seismometric parameters in a seismic area of Southern Italy

In this work we describe the main features of a new prototype of remote station able to jointly detect electrical and seismometric parameters. The measuring station has been installed at Tito site on the Southern Apennine chain, one of the most seismic active areas of the Mediterranean region; it combines new technologies for the data acquisition with a robust statistical technique to discriminate anomalous fluctuations from background noise in the recorded signals. The completely automatic station is equipped with sensors able to detect self-potential signals (16 channels, A/D 24 bit, sampling rate of 0.25Hz) and a 1Hz three directional seismometer connected to an acquisition unit having a dynamics of 133 dB. After a preliminary filtering procedure, mainly devoted to remove all the influences due to meteo-climatic parameters and/or cultural electrical noise, a software developed ad hoc to study the possible correlation between anomalous patterns in electrical signals and local microseismic activity was employed. In particular, the instrumental features of the new station allow us to compare the fluctuations of electrical signal, detected at short temporal scales, with seismic events with low magnitude (M<3), that are not revealed by the national seismometric network (National Institute of Geophysics). The analysis of the first results obtained during the 1999 confirms us that the station could be largely used in a geophysical monitoring network operating in seismic active areas. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.