We investigate a large geodetic data set of interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) and GPS measurements to determine the source parameters for the three main shocks of the 2016 Central Italy earthquake sequence on 24 August and 26 and 30 October (M_w 6.1, 5.9, and 6.5, respectively). Our preferred model is consistent with the activation of four main coseismic asperities belonging to the SW dipping normal fault system associated with the Mount Gorzano‐Mount Vettore‐Mount Bove alignment. Additional slip, equivalent to a M_w ~ 6.1–6.2 earthquake, on a secondary (1) NE dipping antithetic fault and/or (2) on a WNW dipping low‐angle fault in the hanging wall of the main system is required to better reproduce the complex deformation pattern associated with the greatest seismic event (the M_w 6.5 earthquake). The recognition of ancillary faults involved in the sequence suggests a complex interaction in the activated crustal volume between the main normal faults and the secondary structures and a partitioning of strain release.

GPS (Global Positioning System) data collected in the Corinth Rift during eleven campaigns between 1990 and 2001 provide velocities of 57 points with ∼ 1 . 5 mm yr - 1 accuracy. Peloponnesos moves at 30 mm yr - 1 to the N215° E with respect to a fixed Europe. Extension across the rift is accommodated in a narrow band offshore. Its rate increases from east to west and is 16 mm yr - 1 near Aigion. Both sides of the rift behave as clockwise rotating blocks with rates of 7 ± 0 . 5 ° M yr - 1 and 2 . 8 ± 0 . 8 ° M yr - 1 , respectively for the northern and southern blocks. After removing block rotations, the northern block shows a north–south extension rate of 120 ± 50 nstrain yr - 1 , whereas the southern block indicates the internal deformation is still inside the error bar ( < 20 nstrain yr - 1 ). The strain accumulation across the major faults located along the southern coast of the Corinth Gulf is less than 1 mm yr - 1 . This implies long recurrence periods for large earthquakes on these faults.

A new set of geodetic velocities for Greece and the Aegean, derived from 254 survey‐mode and continuous GPS sites, is used to test kinematic and dynamic models for this area of rapid continental deformation. Modeling the kinematics of the Aegean by the rotation of a small number (3–6) of blocks produces RMS misfits of ∼5 mm yr⁻¹ in the southern Aegean and western Peloponnese, indicating significant internal strain within these postulated blocks. It is possible to fit the observed velocities to within 2–3 mm yr⁻¹ (RMS) by models that contain 10 or more blocks, but many such models can be found, with widely varying arrangements of blocks, that fit the data equally well provided that the horizontal dimension of those blocks is not larger than 100–200 km. A continuous field of velocity calculated from the GPS velocities by assuming that strain rates are homogeneous on the scale of ∼120 km fits the observed velocities to better than 2–3 mm yr⁻¹ (RMS), with systematic misfits, representing more localized strain, confined to a region approximately 100 × 100 km in size around the western Gulf of Corinth. This velocity field accounts for the major active tectonic features of Greece and the Aegean, including the widespread north‐south extensional deformation and the distributed strike‐slip deformation in the NE Aegean and western Greece. The T axes of earthquakes are aligned with the principal axes of elongation in the geodetic field, major active normal fault systems are perpendicular to those axes, and ∼90% of the large earthquakes in this region during the past 120 years took place within the areas in which the geodetic strain rate exceeds 30 nanostrain yr⁻¹. These observations suggest that the faulting within the upper crust of the Aegean region is driven by forces that are coherent over a scale that is significantly greater than 100 km. It is likely that those forces arise primarily from differences in gravitational potential energy within the lithosphere of the region.