Simone Francesco Fornasari
PostDoc in seismology, SeisRaM group, University of Trieste.
I work on real-time seismic monitoring and earthquake hazard assessment: earthquake early warning at near-fault observatories (NITRO), harmonized ground-shaking maps across institutes and borders (CONCORDIA), Bayesian spectral decomposition and site-response estimation (Campi Flegrei, Trieste), and seismic-noise methods for landslide characterization.
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CV
Education
2020–2024
PhD in Earth Sciences, Fluid Dynamics and Mathematics
University of Trieste, Dept. of Mathematics and Geosciences. Degree awarded 22 March 2024.
Thesis: Development of machine learning approaches for real-time ground-shaking maps reconstruction.
Advisor: Giovanni Costa. Co-advisor: Veronica Pazzi.
2017–2019
MSc in Geosciences
University of Trieste, Dept. of Mathematics and Geosciences.
Thesis: Ground-shaking scenarios, site-effect and seismic-input estimation in an urban context.
Advisor: Fabio Romanelli. Co-advisor: Franco Vaccari.
2013–2017
BSc in Physics
University of Trieste, Dept. of Physics.
Thesis: Analysis and synthesis of lunar seismic signals.
Advisor: Fabio Romanelli. Co-advisors: Franco Vaccari, Alessandro Vuan.
Positions
16 Nov 2023 – present
Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Assegno di Ricerca)
University of Trieste, Dept. of Mathematics, Computer Science and Geosciences. Machine-learning and Bayesian techniques applied to real-time analysis of accelerometric data for civil-protection purposes: ground-shaking maps, earthquake early warning, spectral decomposition, seismic-noise analysis, and landslide characterization.
May – Jul 2019
Curricular internship
University of Trieste. Synthetic seismogram computation for site-response evaluation.
Oct – Dec 2016
Curricular internship
OGS (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale). Python code development for seismic event (re)location.
Research Projects
Jun 2025 – present
CONCORDIA — COoperative Network for COoRdinated Disaster Impact Assessment
Interreg VI-A Italy-Slovenia (2025–2027). Lead partner: University of Trieste. Developing a harmonized ground-shaking map.
Dec 2024 – present
TRANSFORM² — TowaRds AdvaNced multidiSciplinary Fault ObseRvatory systeMs²
Horizon Europe, HORIZON-INFRA-2024-DEV-01, GA 101188365 (2024–2027). Partner: University of Trieste. Assessing earthquake early warning applicability for the NITRO near-fault observatory.
Dec 2024 – Apr 2025
MEET — Monitoring Earth's Evolution and Tectonics
PNRR, Mission 4, Research Infrastructures, IR0000025. Partner: University of Trieste (PI: G. Costa). Developed the UniTS unit's dataset.
Training
- Sep 2026 — Workshop “A cinquant’anni dal terremoto del Friuli: quanto siamo preparati a gestire la prossima emergenza sismica?”, INGV-OGS, Rome, Italy
- Jun 2025 — New Monitoring Technologies for Near Fault Observatories (NFO), Irpinia Summer School (MEET project), Grottaminarda and Naples, Italy
- Nov 2024 — 11th Workshop on Collaborative Scientific Software Development and Management of Open Source Scientific Packages, ICTP, Trieste, Italy
- Jul 2023 — 2023 InSAR Processing and Theory with GMTSAR Short Course, EarthScope Consortium (virtual)
- Jun 2023 — European Antelope Users Group Meeting 2023, GeoSphere Austria, Vienna, Austria
- Nov 2022 — Public Engagement with Geoscience Workshop Series, EGU Outreach Committee (virtual)
- Jul 2022 — Machine Learning in Geosciences Summer School, University of Pisa, Italy
- Jul 2022 — Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School (EEML22), Vilnius, Lithuania (virtual)
- Oct 2021 — Data Assimilation and Inverse Problems in Geophysical Sciences Workshop, Joint ICTP-IUGG (virtual)
Awards
- Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (OSPP) Award, EGU General Assembly 2022.
- Special mention, Associazione per la Geofisica Licio Cernobori (AGLC), GNGTS 2024.
Academic activities
Peer review: Geophysical Journal International, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, International Journal of Geophysics.
Session convener
May 2026
EGU General Assembly 2026
Session SM8.3, "Assessment of Earthquake Related Hazards, Site Effects, and Microzonation". Vienna, Austria.
May 2025
EGU General Assembly 2025
Session SM8.1, "Assessment of Earthquake Related Hazards, Site Effects, and Microzonation". Vienna, Austria.
Apr 2024
EGU General Assembly 2024 (co-convener)
Session SM8.1, "Assessment of Earthquake Related Hazards, Site Effects, and Microzonation". Vienna, Austria.
Oct 2023
BeGEO 2023
Session "Seismology". University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy.
Publications
2026
- Veronica Pazzi, Simone Francesco Fornasari, Stefano Devoto, Giovanni Costa, Emanuele Forte; Reply to: On the Use of Seismic Noise Studies for Landslide Rock Block Hazard Assessment. Communications Earth & Environment 2026, 7.1, p. 767. doi: 10.1038/s43247-026-04028-3
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa; Assessing Earthquake Early Warning Feasibility at the NITRO Near-Fault Observatory Using Numerical and Offline Simulations. Seismological Research Letters 2026. doi: 10.1785/0220260091
2025
- Veronica Pazzi, Simone Francesco Fornasari, Stefano Devoto, Giovanni Costa, Emanuele Forte; Fast Estimation of Landslide Blocks’ Volume from Seismic Noise Measurements. Communications Earth & Environment 2025. doi: 10.1038/s43247-025-02999-3
- Deniz Ertuncay, Pinar Buyukakpinar, Simone Francesco Fornasari, Onur Tan. 23 April 2025 Marmara Sea (Mw 6.3), Türkiye Earthquake: Mainshock, Aftershock, and Ground Observations. Seismica, 2025. doi: 10.26443/seismica.v4i2.1773
- Deniz Ertuncay, Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa; Effect of the COVID-19 lockdown on background noise levels in Italian strong motion network. Frontiers in Earth Science - Section Solid Earth Geophysics 2025, vol. 12 - 2024. doi: 10.3389/feart.2024.1507241
2024
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa; Neural‐Network and Multivariate‐Normal‐Distribution Hybrid Method for Real‐Time Ground‐Shaking Reconstruction. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 2024; doi: 10.1785/0120240095
2023
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Deniz Ertuncay, Giovanni Costa; Seismic background noise levels in the Italian strong-motion network. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 2023, 23.10: 3219-3234. doi: 10.5194/nhess-23-3219-2023
2022
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa; A Machine‐Learning Approach for the Reconstruction of Ground‐Shaking Fields in Real Time. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America 2022; doi: 10.1785/0120220034
- Costa, Giovanni, Piero Brondi, Laura Cataldi, Stefano Cirilli, Arianna Cuius, Deniz Ertuncay, Piero Falconer, Luisa Filippi, Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, and Philippe Turpaud. 2022. “Near-Real-Time Strong Motion Acquisition at National Scale and Automatic Analysis” Sensors 22, 15: 5699. doi: 10.3390/s22155699
Presentations
Invited oral presentations
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Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa. Real-time Ground Shaking Maps With Antelope And ML. European Antelope Users Group Meeting 2024, Vienna, Austria. 2024 slides - Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa. The road to real time ground shaking maps is paved with ORB packages. European Antelope Users Group Meeting 2023, Vienna, Austria. 2023
Oral presentations
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. Investigating the Potential for Earthquake Early Warning at the NITRO Near-Fault Observatory. 40th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission, Istanbul, Türkiye. 2026
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. Bayesian Generalised Linear Models for Spectral Decomposition at Campi Flegrei. 40th General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission, Istanbul, Türkiye. 2026
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. Evaluating NITRO’s EEWS readiness. Short oral presentation (2–3 min), EPOS Days 2026, Cagliari, Italy. 2026
- Veronica Pazzi, Simone Francesco Fornasari, Stefano Devoto, Giovanni Costa, Emanuele Forte. An eigenfrequency abacus for rapid estimation of block volumes from seismic noise measurements. GNGTS26, Udine, Italy (speaker: S. F. Fornasari). 2026
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. Assessing Earthquake Early Warning Feasibility at the NITRO Near-Fault Observatory. GNGTS26 (and AGLC26), Udine, Italy. 2026
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Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. Site response function evaluation at Campi Flegrei accelerometric stations. EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria. 2025 abstract - Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. Estimation of the site response function for accelerometric stations within Campi Flegrei. GNGTS25 (and AGLC25), Bologna, Italy. 2025
- Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa. Development of a hybrid method for ground shaking map reconstruction in near-real time. GNGTS24 (and AGLC24), Ferrara, Italy. 2024
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Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa. Development of a hybrid GMPE-less ShakeMap implementation for real-time ground shaking maps reconstruction. EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria. 2023 abstract -
Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa. Real-Time Ground Shaking Maps Reconstructions With a Hybrid ShakeMap Implementation. SSA Annual Meeting 2023, San Juan, Puerto Rico. 2023 abstract -
Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa. Real-time ground-shaking maps reconstruction of late 2022 Italian earthquakes. GNGTS23 (and AGLC23), Bologna, Italy. 2023 video -
Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa, Veronica Pazzi. A machine-learning approach for the reconstruction of ground shaking fields in real-time. EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria (virtual). 2022 abstract slides OSPP award
Posters
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Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. A Feasibility Study of Earthquake Early Warning at the NITRO Near-Fault Observatory. EGU General Assembly 2026, Vienna, Austria. 2026 abstract - Simone Francesco Fornasari, Giovanni Costa. Evaluating NITRO’s EEWS readiness. EPOS Days 2026, Cagliari, Italy. 2026
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Simone Francesco Fornasari, Veronica Pazzi, Giovanni Costa. Toward a general hybrid ground shaking map reconstruction method. BeGEO 2023, Naples, Italy. 2023 poster -
Simone Francesco Fornasari (with Deniz Ertuncay). Investigating machine-learning based mapping techniques for seismic data denoising. EEML 2022, Vilnius, Lithuania (virtual). 2022 poster video
Outreach
Nov 2022 – present
Secondary-school lab: "How earthquakes happen and how to deal with seismic risk"
Trieste, Italy.
Sep 2026
Trieste Next science festival — stand "50 years after the Friuli earthquake: the University of Trieste's contribution to earthquake knowledge"
Trieste, Italy.
Sep 2023
Trieste Next science festival — stand "Geosciences and environmental sustainability"
Trieste, Italy.
Sep – Oct 2022
Exhibition "Terremoti d'Italia" (Earthquakes of Italy)
At Trieste Next and Barcolana 2022, Trieste, Italy.
Sep 2021
Trieste Next science festival — stand "Geological safety, earthquakes, seismic monitoring networks and shaking maps"
Trieste, Italy.
Oct 2021
NASA Space Apps Challenge 2021 — Team Carso
Landslide Tracker for the UK, a machine-learning concept for identifying hazardous landslide locations. Awarded for the Trieste location and shortlisted as a global nominee.
Presentation · video