2016 Central Italy Earthquakes Recorded by Low‐Cost MEMS‐Distributed Arrays

Modern seismic ground-motion sensors reached excellent response quality in terms of dynamic and bandwidth resolution. The weakest point in the recording of the strong-motion wavefield is the spatial sampling and resolution, due to the limited number of installed sensors, often at large distances. A significant improvement in spatial resolution can be achieved by the use of low-cost distributed sensors arrays, capable of recording seismic events with a dense sensors network. In this perspective, microelectro mechanical system (MEMS) sensors could efficiently integrate the use of standard accelerometers for moderate-to-strong seismic events. In this article, we present data from the 2016 Central Italy earthquakes, recorded by a spatially dense prototype MEMS array installed in the neighborhood of the epicenter area. MEMS records are compared against the national strong-motion network data, suggesting that these very low-cost sensors could be an effective choice for increasing the spatial density of stations to provide strong-motion peak parameters.