The development of building inventory is a fundamental step for the evaluation of the seismic risk at territorial scale. Census data are usually employed for building inventory in large scale application and their use requires suitable rules to assign buildings typologies to vulnerability classes, that is an exposure model specific for the considered vulnerability model. Several exposure models are developed proposing class assignment rules that are calibrated on building typological data available from post-earthquake survey data. However, this approach has the drawback of being based on data from specific geographic areas that have been hit by damaging earthquakes. Indeed, the distribution of building typologies can vary greatly for different areas of a country and the diffusion of one building’s typology rather than another one may depend on the availability of construction material in the area, the evolution of construction techniques and the codes in force at the time of construction. This paper aims to improve the exposure modelling at regional scale, investigating the variability of masonry building typologies distribution. It proposes a methodology to recalibrate the exposure models at regional scale and evaluates the influence of the improved characterization of regional vulnerability on damage and risk assessment. The study shows that the analysis of local building typologies may strongly impact on the evaluation of the seismic risk at territorial scale.
Effective disaster risk management in a given area relies on the analysis of all relevant risks potentially affecting it. A proper multi-risk evaluation requires the ranking of analyzed risks and the estimation of overall expected impacts, considering possible hazards (and vulnerabilities) interactions as well. Due to their complex and challenging modelling, such interactions are usually neglected, and the analysis of risks derived from different sources are commonly performed through independent analysis. However, often the assessment procedures adopted for the analysis as well as the metrics used to express various risks are different, making results of single risk analyses hardly comparable. To overcome this issue, an approach that allows for comparing and ranking risks is presented in this study. The approach is demonstrated through an application for an Italian region. Earthquakes and floods are the investigated hazards. First, in order to select the case study area, the municipalities within the Veneto region where both risks could be highest are identified by adopting an index-based approach. Then, the harmonization of seismic and flood risk assessment procedure is performed. Sub-municipal areas are selected as scale of analysis and direct economic losses are chosen as common impact metrics. The results of the single risk analyses are compared using risk curves as standardization tool. The EAL (expected annual losses) are estimated through risk curves and the ratios between EAL due to floods and earthquakes are mapped, showing in which area risk is significantly higher than the other.
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