ESM Topography Web-Service

The ESM Topography Web-Service allows obtaining the slope angle and the related topographic category according to the Italian seismic code (NTC18). Moreover, it provides a value of the share-wave velocity profile in the upper 30 m (VS30) obtained with a correlation with the slope angle (Wald and Allen, 2007). The web-service relies on the procedure of Mascandola et al. (2021) and it can be adopted for a specific seismic station or for generic coordinates."

A complete list of supported options and usage examples is available in the query-options webpage.

Available URLs

• application.wadl

Feature Notes

• The output is provided in JSON format containing both the list of the input options and the output values.
• Currently, results are provided for the following country: Italy, Albania, Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Montenegro, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey.

References

• NTC18 - Norme Tecniche per le Costruzioni. Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei Trasporti. Aggiornamento delle Norme Tecniche per le Costruzioni. Part 3.2.2: Categorie di sottosuolo e condizioni topografiche, Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 42 del 20 febbraio 2018 (in Italian)
• Mascandola C., Luzi L., Felicetta C., Pacor F. (2021) A GIS procedure for the topographic classification of Italy, according to the seismic code provisions.Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering
• Wald D.J., Allen T.I. (2007) Topographic slope as a proxy for seismic site conditions and amplification. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 97-5: 1379-1395

Citation

If you use this service or its data, please cite it as follows:
Mascandola C., Felicetta C., Russo E., Luzi L., Lanzano G., Sgobba S., Brunelli G., Ramadan F., Pacor F., ORFEUS Strong-Motion SMC (2026). Engineering Strong Motion Database (ESM), version 3.0. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). https://doi.org/10.13127/esm.3

Backend Python software used by this web service is developed and maintained by Felicetta C. and Russo E.