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ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268 

 

 1 

The development of a cloud-GIS 
platform for the management 

and sharing of geographic data 
during the central Italy seismic 

sequence. 

MAURIZIO PIGNONE1, ROCCO COGLIANO2, RAFFAELE MOSCHILLO1 

1 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Centro Nazionale Terremoti,Grottaminarda (AV), Italy 
2 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sezione Roma1, Grottaminarda (AV), Italy 

maurizio.pignone@ingv.it 

Abstract 

For several years, the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV, National Institute of Geo-

physics and Volcanology) uses ArcGIS Online (www.arcgis.com), to share information about the real-time 

seismicity in Italy with other geographical data, geological and seismological, through the development of 

different WebGIS applications with various customized functionalities. During the earthquake emergency 

in Central Italy in August 2016,  WebGIS applications have been widely used. They derive from a com-

mon platform developed a few months earlier by the LABGIS of INGV-Irpinia. This platform has enabled 

the management and updating of the seismic data of the sequence in real time and their integration with 

the leading INGV databases seismological and seismotectonic and those of other Institutes. Moreover, the-

se applications have permission to manage and share information and even data from the activities of the 

INGV Emergency Groups , such as the location and characteristics of seismic and  accelerometric tempo-

rary stations installed by the teams of SISMIKO and EMERSITO and the geological observations from 

the EMERGEO Group. 

 

 

I. THE CLOUD-GIS 

he Cloud-GIS is the combination of 

running GIS software and services on 

cloud infrastructure and accessing 

GIS capabilities using the web. Cloud compu-

ting offers an alternative to traditional meth-

ods of delivering and consuming GIS soft-

ware and services to users. Instead of run-

ning on their GIS systems and computing 

operations, with Cloud-GIS, software and 

services are hosted on the infrastructure 

made available through the web technolo-

gies. The Cloud-GIS could be defined as a 

new generation of on-demand GIS technolo-

gy that uses a virtualized platform or an in-

frastructure in a scalable dynamic environ-

ment. 

T



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268

 

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For some time different Cloud-GIS platforms 

are available on the web, free and fee: these 

platforms allow you to create web maps by 

integrating local spatial datasets with geo-

graphic services available, as the base maps 

or thematic map services. 

One of the most popular platforms is 

Mangomap (https://mangomap.com/) that lets 

you transform your data into online web 

mapping solutions without coding, pro-

grammers, servers (cloud-based). With 

Mangomap (free only for 30 days) it is possi-

ble to create maps completely customized 

but does not allow you to load data from 

online sources (for example Google drive), 

but only via upload. 

Another Web maps publishing service is 

QGIS Cloud (https://qgiscloud.com/), it is an 

open source personal spatial data infrastruc-

ture (SDI) on the internet which allow to 

publish QGIS Desktop projects with maps 

and data. All maps published on the internet 

are freely accessible by anyone at zero cost 

and it’s possible to limit the access to your 

maps.  QGIS Cloud allows only viewing and 

not the editing of a web map created by 

QGIS desktop project and does not allow to 

load the dynamic layers. 

One of the most widely used cloud platforms 

by GIS users worldwide is ArcGIS Online, 

developed by ESRI and available on 

http://www.arcgis.com, is the cloud-based shar-

ing system "ready to use" that allows a user 

to build a complete GIS, containing maps 

and applications, with the possibility of ac-

cess to a large collection of basic geograph-

ical data with worldwide coverage (ESRI 

Basemaps). This Cloud-GIS allows for creating 

maps and Web applications and sharing with 

different types of users by creating public or 

private working groups. ArcGIS Online al-

lows the management of different types of 

geographic data and geospatial applications, 

made available directly from ESRI or from 

community of ESRI users around the world. 

It can be defined as a "social network of geo-

graphic information". 

ArcGIS Online (Figure 1) allows you to man-

age and import a large quantity and diversi-

ty of information with geographic compo-

nent from desktop GIS (ESRI shapefile), other 

GIS software, online resources such as the 

OGC map-services (WMS, WFS), Google 

Maps and Google Earth formats (KML and 

KMZ) and even simple text files and tabular 

data such as CSV and TXT.  

 

With this data it is possible to create, through 

a very intuitive interface, the Web-maps that 

represent the starting point for the develop-

ment of applications WebGIS choosing from 

the templates available with different fea-

tures and functionalities. The WebGIS, once 

created and saved in the Cloud-GIS with its 

layers and its configurations, can be shared 

Figure 1: The scheme of ArcGIS Online. It is pos-

sible to manage and import a large quantity and 

diversity of information with geographic compo-

nents. 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268 

 

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with a group of users or shared with every-

one and published on the Web.  

INGV has its own Cloud space on ArcGIS 

Online (subscription plan) where it can host 

web maps, geographic data, Web applica-

tions and can be shared within the Institute 

or outside or with individual working 

groups.  INGV uses ESRI ArcGIS software 

for creating and managing geographic data-

bases with scientific datasets from its moni-

toring networks that allow the development 

of  cartographic products and for the web. 

ArcGIS Online is fully integrated with the 

other components of the ArcGIS system and 

this is a huge advantage for the sharing of 

datasets and creating for web publishing ap-

plications. Furthermore, all data uploaded 

and managed in ArcGIS Online are hosted in 

"ESRI's Secure Cloud" that ensures their safe-

ty and copyright and allowing you to associ-

ate to every single dataset, maps or web ap-

plications  the metadata and a data policy. 

II. THE SEISMIC DATA MANAGEMENT IN 

REAL TIME 

The real-time seismic data represent a very 

useful resource especially for emergency 

management but also for communication 

and information for the public. The major 

worldwide centers of seismic monitoring 

have invested a lot of resources on the shar-

ing of this information in real time through 

the development of web applications for 

general users based on digital maps and ge-

ographic services. The USGS allows to follow 

the seismicity around the world through an 

interactive map 

(http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/ma

p/), but also to download different formats 

data, including geographic (GeoRSS, KML, 

CSV , Atom, etc.). Similarly, even the CSEM 

has developed interactive geographical web 

application to view the real time seismicity 

in the Mediterranean and around the world 

(http://www.emsc-

csem.org/Earthquake/significant_earthquake

s.php). Some of these datasets on seismicity 

are used in several web portals and 

smartphones and tablets applications that 

collect and share information on natural 

risks and emergencies. For example the 

ESRI’s Disaster Response Program 

(http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-

response/earthquakes), a platform that is a 

supporting for organizations that are re-

sponding to earthquake and tsunami disas-

ters with software, data, imagery, project 

services, and maps. An interactive earth-

quake map that show the earthquake loca-

tions, shaking intensity, and population as 

well as social media updates regarding 

earthquakes that have occurred around the 

world. The web interface for sharing and dis-

tribution of real-time seismic data recorded 

by the National Seismic Network (INGV) in 

Italy is ISIDE - Italian Seismic Instrumental 

and parametric data-base 

(http://iside.rm.ingv.it/), where it is possible 

to search and download the data, also in ge-

ographic formats. In recent years different 

WebGIS applications have been developed 

by the LABGIS of INGV-Irpinia 

(Grottaminarda-AV) using ArcGIS Online 

and the real time seismic data from ISIDE.  

An example is GEOSIS, a WebGIS application 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268

 

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showing recent and real time seismicity, ex-

tracted by ISIDE, with other useful geo-

graphic data derived from other INGV data-

bases and studies, such as historical seismici-

ty, seismic hazard, seismic classification, the 

last thirty years seismicity (Pignone et al. 

2012). The evolution of ArcGIS Online and 

the development and recent publication of 

the INGV- Centro Nazionale Terremoti 

(CNT, National Earthquake Centre) Web-

services (http://cnt.rm.ingv.it) allowed the de-

sign and implementation of a new applica-

tion software for the management of the 

seismic data and those of the monitoring 

networks in real time (called XPY) constitut-

ed by a set of scripts and procedures. The ar-

chitecture of XPY system is formed by two 

servers located in the data center of 

Grottaminarda on which run a series of py-

thon scripts for finding, processing and pub-

lishing the real time seismic data and the real 

time monitoring networks data.  

The XPY system runs in the background and 

performs the following operations (Figure 2): 

● interrogation of Web-services of the Na-

tional Earthquake Center 

(http://webservices.rm.ingv.it/fdsnws/e

vent/1/). XPY requires the list of earth-

quakes located by the National Seismic 

Network in the last "X" days; 

● the event list obtained by Web-services is 

processed and some CSV (comma-

separated values) files are generated as 

needed; for example the last earth-

quake, the last 24 hours earthquakes or 

those of last 30 days; 

● the generated CSV files are processed to 

classify events based on specific attrib-

utes such as: magnitude intervals, time 

intervals, geographic areas (this allows 

the creation of different GIS layers); 

● for the information relating to the posi-

tioning and characteristics of the INGV 

permanent monitoring stations, the 

query is performed at SEISFACE (the 

Web interface for managing and locating 

information of INGV SEISNET data-

base) and contains information in real 

time about the monitoring networks; 

● synchronization of CSV files produced 

by queries with the sharing webserver 

and online publication. 

 

All the parameters that determine the pro-

duction of the CSV files are managed by the 

XPY system through a configuration file that 

determines the scripts settings and can be 

modified at run-time without the stop and 

reboot of the system. It is possible to edit the 

configuration file by changing the parame-

ters or by adding new processing requests. 

The CSV data of real-time seismicity, made 

and shared on the web through the XPY sys-

tem, can be easily integrated within ArcGIS 

Figure 2: The operation of the XPY system and 

the integration of data in ArcGIS Online. 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268 

 

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Online as a Web CSV layer with the possibil-

ity of defining an update time interval. The-

se CSV files can also be downloaded and 

used with desktop GIS software for the pro-

duction of thematic maps. During the seis-

mic emergency in central Italy, the data 

source for the thematic maps published on 

the web portal of the INGV (www.ingv.it) 

and on the INGVterremoti communication 

platform 

(http://ingvterremoti.wordpress.com) have 

been these CSV files. The map (Figure 3) has 

been realized using several layers, classified 

and displayed according to the magnitude 

classes (symbols size) and the time (colors) 

to follow the temporal evolution of the cen-

tral Italy seismic activity. The chosen sym-

bology has been conceived to provide an 

immediate impact of the ongoing activity, 

and is analogous to the symbology adopted 

in the CNT web pages (http://cnt.rm.ingv.it) 

and in the INGVterremoti App on IOS and 

Android. 

III. WEB APPLICATIONS FOR MANAGING 

AND SHARING GEOGRAPHIC DATA DURING 

THE SEISMIC EMERGENCY 

Due to the development of the XPY system 

and to new functionalities available in the 

recent versions of ArcGIS Online it was pos-

sible to improve the integration and sharing 

Figure 3: Thematic map of spatio-temporal distribution of the seismic sequence. 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268

 

 6 

of geographic data for the emergency man-

agement activities through the development 

of a work platform in ArcGIS Online. This 

platform was tested during the earthquake 

simulation organized by INGV in November 

2015 and used during the seismic emergency 

in August 2016 (magnitude 6.0 earthquake 

on August 24th between the provinces of 

Rieti and Ascoli Piceno). The work platform 

is constituted by several Web-maps and Web 

applications for the management and updat-

ing of the seismic data and the monitoring 

networks in real time and their integration 

with the principal INGV seismological and 

seismotectonic databases and those of other 

Institutes. In the maps, it is also possible to 

directly manage and share information and 

data from the activities of the INGV Emer-

gency Groups 

(https://ingvterremoti.wordpress.com/il-

monitoraggio-sismico/attivita-in-

emergenza/), for example, the position and 

characteristics of temporary seismic and 

accelerometric stations installed by SISMIKO 

and EMERSITO teams but also the geological 

observations from surveys of geologists of 

EMERGEO. Starting from these Web-maps, 

the Web applications have been developed 

using the ArcGIS Online template or the Ap-

plication Builder for ArcGIS; the Web appli-

cations have been shared within the INGV 

Crisis Unit (the team that coordinates all the 

INGV emergency activities) and Emergency 

Groups in order to coordinate the activities 

on epicentral area. 

 

Data from the Emergency Groups 

During the early days of the seismic se-

quence in central Italy, to simplify the inter-

action and sharing of information from the 

different INGV Emergency Groups operat-

ing in epicentral area, a data-sharing system 

was used through a Google spreadsheet 

(Google DOCS) platform which is used nor-

mally by INGV for the mail service, storage, 

etc. Each group was responsible for imple-

mentation and updating the table (a Google 

spreadsheet) created specifically for their ac-

tivities. The table shared among all the par-

ticipants of the emergency activities could be 

populated or changed simultaneously by one 

or more users in real time. The table generat-

ed a CSV file that, loaded in the Web-map of 

ArcGIS Online as a CSV Layer, allowed the 

visualization of geographical information 

updated in real time (Figure 4). 

 

 

For example, for the SISMIKO group, the in-

formation provided on Google document ta-

ble is relative to sites hosting the installed 

temporary seismic stations and the charac-

teristics of instrumentation. In the ArcGIS 

Online Web-map, the SISMIKO layer shows 

Figure 4: The integration of Google documents 

within ArcGIS online Web-maps. 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268 

 

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the temporary stations displayed in different 

colors indicating the teams from Rome, 

Grottaminarda, Ancona and Pisa, participat-

ing to the installation of the stations. This has 

allowed for following day-to-day progress in 

the implementation of the network of each 

team. It is possible to query the map by click-

ing on each station to see the pop-up of the 

detailed information relating to the individ-

ual station. The pop-up allows for displaying 

of the name, the location, the coordinates, 

the type of power, the type of connectivity 

for each station and also for incorporating 

multimedia elements collected during instal-

lation phase (Figure 5). In this way, all the 

SISMIKO members share the information 

and documents in real time; proving is use-

ful for planning new installations. Similarly, 

other CSV layers have been generated for 

other networks installed by Emergency 

Groups like EMERSITO and for geological 

field observations detected by the geologists 

of EMERGEO Group. 

Seismicity and other data in real time 

The real time seismicity has been organized, 

in the ArcGIS Online Web-maps, in layers in 

which the earthquakes localized by the Na-

tional Seismic Network are represented by a 

different color for each temporal interval and 

classified in five classes of magnitude value. 

This representation type is consistent with 

that used in the maps of the National Earth-

quake Center website (http://cnt.rm.ingv.it), 

in the maps of the INGVterremoti blog and 

in the INGVTerremoti App for iOS and An-

droid: 

● earthquakes in the last hour (red) 

●  earthquakes in the last 24 hours (or-

ange) 

Figure 5: The ArcGIS Online Web Map for management of SISMIKO activities with the attributes of the 

temporary stations layer. 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268

 

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●  earthquakes in the last 3 days (yellow) 

 

●  earthquakes from January 1st 2016 

(blue) 

For the INGV permanent monitoring net-

works, the following layers have been pro-

duced with the detailed information for each 

station and its operation level: 

● National Seismic Network Stations 

(RSN) 

● INGV Accelerometric Network Stations 

● National Integrated GPS Network Sta-

tions (RING) 

 

Database and Catalogues from INGV and other 

Institutes 

Some datasets have been extracted, in differ-

ent export formats (text and geographic for-

mat), from the INGV and other Institutes 

catalogues and databases and, with some 

operations, have been made compatible as 

layers for the ArcGIS Online Web-maps. For 

each layer, appropriate classification and 

thematization have been created and pop-

ups have been configured to display some of 

the attributes included in the database: 

● instrumental seismicity 2006-2016, ex-

tracted from the ISIDE database 

(http://iside.rm.igv.it) with events of 

magnitude ≥ 2.5 (4 different classes of 

magnitude); 

● instrumental seismicity 1985-2005, ex-

tracted from the ISIDE database with 

magnitude ≥3.0 seismic events (4 differ-

ent classes of magnitude); 

● strong earthquakes of the past extracted 

from CPTI15, the 2015 version of the 

Parametric Catalogue of Italian Earth-

quakes 

(http://emidius.mi.ingv.it/CPTI15-

DBMI15/) with events of estimated 

magnitude (Mwdef) ≥ 5.0 (5 different 

classes of magnitude) ; 

● national seismic hazard map (GdL MPS, 

2004; Ordinanza PCM, April 28, 2006, n. 

3519, All. 1b); it provides the 10% prob-

ability of exceedance in 50 years of the 

horizontal acceleration at rock sites (i.e., 

Vs30>800 m/s; cat. A, 3.2.1 of the D.M. 

14.09.2005, 

http://zonesismiche.mi.ingv.it); 

● database of individual seismogenic 

sources, DISS 3.2.0 

(http://diss.rm.ingv.it/diss/), divided in-

to individual seismogenic sources, 

composite seismogenic sources, debated 

seismogenic sources. 

In some maps, several map-services of other 

institutions dataset have been uploaded in 

WMS format (Open Geospatial Consortium 

standard): for example, the Lithological Map 

of Italy and the database of faults ITHACA 

from ISPRA, the maps of Copernicus Emer-

gency Management Service for the Central 

Italy Earthquake. The ArcGIS Online layers of 

data from emergency teams and real time 

seismicity are shared exclusively with users 

involved in emergency. This choice is justi-

fied by two reasons: the first is that many of 

the collected data are still provisional and, 

therefore, cannot  be shared outside, the se-

cond is that sharing of ArcGIS Online layers 

of real time seismicity during an emergency, 

there are no certainties on ESRI of cloud plat-

form performance for a high number of 

viewing requests. 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268 

 

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The development of WebGIS applications 

Once the data within the work platform in 

ArcGIS Online has been organized and load-

ed in the Web-maps  it has been possible to 

transform maps into WebGIS applications 

with basic and customized functionalities.  

ArcGIS Online provides different Web appli-

cation templates with the possibility to cus-

tomize them according to the type of fea-

tures and preferred layout. Another possibil-

ity is to use the Web Application Builder for 

ArcGIS that provides a foundation for build-

ing Web applications in ArcGIS Online with-

out writing a single line of code. With Web 

AppBuilder, it is possible to create a custom 

HTML / javascript Web application, to con-

figure the look-and-feel of the app by pick-

ing a theme that includes a collection of pan-

els, styles, layouts, and pre-configured 

widgets, add others widgets and functionali-

ty. The Web applications run on any device 

including tablets and smartphones. Several 

custom Web applications have been devel-

oped for the activities management and the 

data sharing of the INGV Emergency 

Groups. For example, for EMERGEO a 

WebGIS  has been developed with a layer of 

earthquake observations (classified in co-

seismic rupture, co-seismic fracture, co-

seismic sliding, no co-seismic effect) and a 

Web interface with these functionalities: leg-

end, layer list, add data, print, basemaps, 

measure, bookmarks, info (Figure 6). 

Among the features included within web in-

terfaces, ADD DATA allows to add other 

shared geographic ArcGIS Online layers 

(they can be searched by keywords), or to 

add layers from outside in different formats 

(ESRI ArcGIS Server Map Service, WMS 

OGC Map Service , KML, GeoRSS, CSV). 

This feature allows, therefore, to integrate 

any geographic data of users with scenarios 

realized through the emergency data. 

 

Figure 6: The interface of EMERGEO WebGIS with functionalities avaible on top-right. 



ANNALS OF GEOPHYSICS, 59, Fast Track 5, 2016; DOI:10.4401/ag-7268

 

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III. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE 

DEVELOPMENTS 

The realization of this Cloud-GIS platform 

has enabled the management and updating 

of the seismic data of the Central Italy se-

quence in real time and their integration 

with the main INGV seismological and 

seismotectonic databases. Moreover the plat-

form has allowed for better management of  

sharing of geographic data produced by dif-

ferent INGV emergency groups, such as the 

location and characteristics of seismic and 

accelerometric temporary stations installed 

by SISMIKO and EMERSITO teams and the 

geological observations from the EMERGEO 

Group. Due to Web applications it has been 

possible to create scenarios to manage the 

emergency activities by integrating different 

types of geographic data from different 

sources. The opportunity to manage real-

time data and integrate with different data-

bases made dynamic scenarios providing 

support tools for assessments and decisions 

of the INGV Crisis Unit for the activities of 

emergency management in Central Italy. 

Platform development is continuous and 

aims at various targets: displacement of XPY 

system entirely in the cloud; an improve-

ment in the display performance of geo-

graphic data; creating customized function-

ality in web applications (for example some 

functions for proximity and spatial analysis); 

mobile applications for data collection and 

the direct input in google documents; shar-

ing to all of the real-time seismic data using 

OGC WMS services, and ArcGIS Online lay-

ers. 

REFERENCES 

Pignone M., Moschillo R., (2011). GEOSIS 

WEB, Atti della 15a Conferenza Naziona-

le ASITA, Federazione italiana delle As-

sociazioni Scientifiche per le Informazioni 

Territoriali e Ambientali, Reggia di Co-

lorno, ISBN 978-88-903132-6-4, 

http://www.earth-

prints.org/handle/2122/7489. 

Pignone M. e Moschillo R. (2012). GEOSIS: 

dall’earthquake report al WebGIS, Qua-

derni di Geofisica INGV n. 94, ISSN 1590-

2595, http://www.earth-

prints.org/handle/2122/7077, 2011. 

Pignone M., Moschillo R., Cogliano R., 

(2012). GEOSIS, An interactive Web-map 

of earthquakes in Italy, Rendiconti online 

Soc. Geol. It., Vol. 19/2012, pp. 20-23, 

ISSN 2035-8008. 

Pignone M., Moschillo R., Cogliano R., 

(2012). A WebGIS application for visuali-

zation and dissemination of italian seis-

micity, Proceedings 7° European Con-

gress on Regional Geoscientific Cartog-

raphy and Informations Systems, Bologna 

2012, Volume II, pp. 644-645, 

http://www.earth-

prints.org/handle/2122/8032.