The forgotten vulnerability: A geology- and history-based approach for ranking the seismic risk of earthquake-prone communities of the Italian Apennines

Valensise, Gianluca; Tarabusi, Gabriele; Guidoboni, Emanuela; Ferrari, Graziano

doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2017.09.014

Cited by 43 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…This may have important consequences on disaster prevention. We suggest that, at least for the areas affected by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, demographic distress may counterbalance or even deny the expectation for which damaging past earthquakes should trigger reconstruction, reinforce building response to shaking and prompt changes in the individual risk perception [Valensise et al, 2017]. This hypothesis can probably be tested on the basis of census data on buildings conditions.…”

Section: Differential Demographic Growthsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Seismic disasters and the demographic perspective: 1968, Belice and 1980, Irpinia-Basilicata (southern Italy) case studies

Lucia

Benassi²,

Meroni³

et al. 2020

Annals of Geophysics

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One of the challenges on disasters' understanding is the assessment of impact from a more global perspective, adding to their scenario of injuries, deaths, homeless and economic losses, those effects that are mostly widespread and could last for a long period of time, driving to a serious disruption of a community or a society. Seismic disasters are not just the results of the energy released by the earthquake or buildings' vulnerability: social, demographic, cultural parameters may instead play a crucial, yet underestimated, role. We carried out a pilot study to investigate the demographic perspective of the impact of 1968 Belice and 1980 Irpinia-Basilicata earthquakes on local communities. The macroseismic MCS intensities were used as a primary parameter upon which the demographic scenario was derived. Population annual growth rates, the ageing index, the childwoman ratio, and the Gini index from the demographic data census of the period 1951-2011 were analyzed to assess population dynamics, age structure evolution and its level of spatial concentration within the disasters' areas. Demographic data were then matched to macroseismic intensities to outline a new, original analysis which describes the impact of the two seismic disasters with a broad multi-parameter perspective. The results highlight also the existence of a general marginality of most affected areas with respect to the processes of population growth, ageing and fertility, as well as for distribution of the regional population, occurring already before the disasters stroke. This marginality might have enhanced the impact of disasters by significantly increasing vulnerability.

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Section: Differential Demographic Growthsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Seismic disasters and the demographic perspective: 1968, Belice and 1980, Irpinia-Basilicata (southern Italy) case studies

Lucia

Benassi²,

Meroni³

et al. 2020

Annals of Geophysics

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“…Italy is prone to natural hazards, also due to its geographical location (Valensise et al, 2017), and it has suffered a long history of catastrophic events. Nevertheless, only the dramatic earthquake events of 2016 in Central Italy (causing more than 300 human losses and considerable damage to the economic, productive, artistic and social fabric) have brought back to the centre of general attention the importance of implementing actions to reduce risks (Pagliacci and Russo, 2019a).…”

Section: Italy: a Country Prone To Adverse Natural Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Three years after its approval, no systematic policy intervention has been implemented and only some pilots have been undertaken (under the "Casa Italia" Plan), although such interventions would be of utmost importance in Italy, the European country with the highest probability of disasters and related economic losses (Beck et al, 2012;Frigerio and De Amicis, 2016;Valensise et al, 2017;Marin et al, 2019). After the urgency of providing an answer to the emergency situation, the complex and long-term process of prevention is hampered not so much by the lack of funds as by the difficulty of taking a top 1 down political decision to start actions in some specific places and directions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Be (and have) good neighbours! Factors of vulnerability in the case of multiple hazards

Pagliacci

Russo

2020

Ecological Indicators

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For any given territory, disaster risk is a function of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. The conceptual frameworks for these dimensions are largely debated in the scientific studies, focusing on spatial and temporal references and on system perspective of risk assessment. Despite broad in their scope, the analytical frameworks proposed to analyse policy programmes to reduce risk generally miss that risk indicators should be grounded on geographical and spatial features of the neighbouring territories and not only on communities' behaviour, and their resilience, as the paradigmatic solution in front of system events in areas prone to natural multi-hazard. The definition of "community" and of "neighbourhood" that are relevant for risk assessment cannot be simply defined in terms of absolute size of population or economic activity of individual local units under analysis or of the formal aggregation provided by jurisdictional agreements on specific functions. The paper presents an empirical analysis on spatially-lagged data in Italy, which was massively hit by adverse natural events in the last decade. It suggests to focus on social and material vulnerability, by using the comprehensive indicator at municipality level elaborated by the Italian Institute of Statistics. At the municipality-level, the analysis shows a positive correlation between multi-hazards, on the one hand, and spatially-lagged exposure and vulnerability, on the other. Thus, conditions in neighbouring municipalities would matter in prioritizing policy interventions aiming at mitigating hazard impacts, reducing vulnerability and enhancing communities' resilience. The definition of significant neighbouring spaces opens to a conceptualization of vulnerability grounded on a relational perspective in the creation of collective goods. This could enhance more effective Disaster Risk Reduction programmes.

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“…This framework considers the coupled human-environment system, from both human and biophysical perspectives [13], and has been generally accepted [14][15][16]. In the field of vulnerability caused by geological hazards, research has not only widely applied this definition framework [17][18][19] but also continuously innovated new methods [20,21] and data applications [22,23]. However, several limitations still affect vulnerability research objects, especially in the field of rural villages.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Historic Environmental Vulnerability Evaluation of Traditional Villages Under Geological Hazards and Influencing Factors of Adaptive Capacity: A District-Level Analysis of Lishui, China

Sheng

et al. 2020

Sustainability

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The historic environmental vulnerability of traditional villages (HEVTVs) is distinctly differentiated; however, the priority of relevant emergency management practices still lacks appropriate evaluation. This study proposes a new assessment system to quantify HEVTVs at the district level and an extended analysis of the influencing factors of adaptive capacity. This provides a basis to classify the emergency management of villages under geological hazard risks. Based on the coupled human–environment system, this research designed the assessment with three criteria, six factors, and 13 indexes from the perspective of HEVTVs. Furthermore, a demonstration test was conducted of 148 traditional villages in Lishui, China. The results showed that 64.19% of HEVTVs in Lishui were moderate or above, and that villages with very high vulnerability were mainly distributed at mid-elevation of mountains with strongly sloping terrain. In contrast, low-vulnerability villages were generally on plains at low altitudes. Furthermore, three high-vulnerability clustering groups were identified as critical improvement targets for which special zoning strategies should be proposed. Five influencing factors were found to be strongly related to the adaptive capacity, indicating a spatial variation of the impact intensity. This could be applied to streamline vulnerability optimization strategies according to local conditions.

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The forgotten vulnerability: A geology- and history-based approach for ranking the seismic risk of earthquake-prone communities of the Italian Apennines

Cited by 43 publications

References 17 publications

Seismic disasters and the demographic perspective: 1968, Belice and 1980, Irpinia-Basilicata (southern Italy) case studies

Seismic disasters and the demographic perspective: 1968, Belice and 1980, Irpinia-Basilicata (southern Italy) case studies

Be (and have) good neighbours! Factors of vulnerability in the case of multiple hazards

Historic Environmental Vulnerability Evaluation of Traditional Villages Under Geological Hazards and Influencing Factors of Adaptive Capacity: A District-Level Analysis of Lishui, China

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