Insurance is an effective complementary countermeasure for unexpected losses brought about by natural hazards. Coverage can be a useful tool considering in particular that public funds available to compensate for damages are limited and the consequences of catastrophes are becoming more severe over the time. Bearing this in mind, the authors performed a study aiming to clear up the main aspects and limits of the insurance market of natural hazards for residential properties in Italy. The opening sections of the paper give an overview of both the historical extreme events in Europe and Italy, and the reasons for the low insurance penetration rate in Italy. After that, the paper goes to the core of the research casting light upon the insurance market in Italy and examining the features and possible drawbacks of the available insurance covers. In this paper, the geophysical (seismic and volcanic) and hydrological (landslide and flood) hazards are analysed, and the residential stock is taken as a reference. After deepening in the local insurance market, the research focuses on the possible suggestions to stakeholders of how to increase the insurance penetration rate by taking advantage of the international experiences.
This paper overviews the procedures and tools used for a systematic study of the macroseismic consequences caused by a strong earthquake that struck Southern Italy. The event referred to the 23 November 1980 (Io = X MCS, Ms = 6.9) which affected the Campania and Basilicata regions. Two aspects are addressed here: to broaden the knowledge of the macroseismic field and delineate damage maps of the sites affected on an urban scale. The target area of this study is the Basilicata region about which the current macroseismic information is poor. This research study, based only on unpublished documentary sources, supplies about 50 new assessments and about 30 new re-assessments of the macroseismic site intensity (MCS scale) as outputs. Moreover, about 80 thematic maps showing the damage pattern of the sites affected are also supplied. It is the first time that a large earthquake has been the subject of such extensive studies from a macroseismic point of view, with special attention to the analysis of damage effects at town scale.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.