Definition
The Modified Mercalli Scale is one of the several scales used in the world to estimate the intensity of earthquakes (see entry Intensity Scales ). It is a tool to evaluate the severity of historical earthquakes in many regions of the world, and it is currently adopted in the USA and other countries for macroseismic surveys. Note that there are different versions of MM Scale, all with 12 degrees. The first one was devised by Wood and Neumann in 1931 (see Table 1), modifying and condensing the Mercalli-Cancani scale, as formulated by Sieberg in 1923. This scale is a hierarchical classification of observed effects; the diagnostic effects for the lower degrees are essentially those on people, for the intermediate and higher degrees those on objects and buildings, and for the highest degrees (XI and XII) those on the environment.
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Comerci, V. (2013). Modified Mercalli (MM) Scale. In: Bobrowsky, P.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Natural Hazards. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4399-4_240
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