4th General Meeting UPStrat-MAFA Urban Disaster Prevention Strategies Using Macroseismic Fields and FAult Sources - Catania 11 | 14 December 2013

Abstract

The European project UPStrat-MAFA (Urban Disaster Prevention Strategies using MAcroseismic and FAult Sources) is a European Commission Project in the area of “Developing knowledge-based disaster prevention policies” whose primary aim is to produce seismic risk analyses for disaster prevention strategies. The European project has been co-financed by UE - Civil Protection Financial Instrument. The main goal of the project was to reach a harmonisation at the urban risk level, merging the best practices and available data in particular locations - Mt. Etna, Campi Flegrei areas (Italy), the Azores Islands and areas hit by offshore seismic activity (Portugal), Southeast Spain (i.e., Alicante-Murcia) and South Iceland including the metropolitan area of Reykjavik. Fruitful collaborations have been established among the members of this two years project, being the group well balanced between seismologists, engineers and statisticians. The project has covered all the issues that need to be addressed for the development of the proposed research and the achievement of measurable progresses beyond the state-of-the-art for urban prevention strategies based on the level of risk and on the education information system.
The project focuses on two main aspects:
a) Disaster prevention strategies based on the level of risk: A new concept of global disruption measures is introduced, with the objective to provide a systematic way to measure earthquake impact in urban areas. Then, a framework is provided where urbanised areas are seen as a complex network where nodal points have roles as sources and sinks, interacting together in an interdependent fashion. These properties are then used to identify which nodes are likely to introduce major disruptions in the whole urban system, and also which of these nodes are the most relevant, implying greater risk reduction if suitable actions are taken.
b) Disaster prevention strategies based on education information system. Effective disaster-risk reduction can be developed in particular through long-term activities, such as education. Often, people have the idea that natural hazards will strike others, but not themselves. In part, this is connected with education itself: textbooks often present “horrible” cases from places far away, compared to which local disasters appear trivial. Consequently, there is an absence of risk perception in people’s lives, which influences development and planning of the community and state, as well as the educational curriculum, and media priorities.
The final beneficiaries will be the Civil Protection, Local Authority and civil society of the State Members participating in the project, and in general, the European Institutions acting in the field of urban disasterprevention strategies.
During the 4th General Meeting in Catania (Italy) on 11th-14th December 2013, the development and final achievements will be presented through oral presentations, posters and round table discussions. The tasks will be presented according to the following structure:
- Seismic hazard assessment: a) forecast damage scenarios using observed and synthetic macroseismic fields to simulate intensity shake maps, given the parameters on the location and intensity of an earthquake; b) evaluate the seismic hazard at a site using macroseismic fields and fault sources; in this case, the seismic histories at the site will be integrated by synthetic effects using finite-fault groundmotion stochastic simulations.
- Seismic risk assessment: a) collect urban-scale vulnerability information on building and network systems; b) evaluate urban-scale exposure by defining synthetic indices and by the use of GIS tools; c) define urban risk, convolving the shaking ground-motion parameters at the site with the vulnerability and exposure.
- Disaster prevention strategies: a) define disaster prevention strategies based on the level of risk (typologies, schools, strategic buildings, critical infrastructures; and so on) and based on an education management information system linked to information about areas and population groups that are prone to particular kinds of emergencies.
Project Leader Gaetano Zonno