The implementation of the Italian National Seismic Prevention Plan: A focus on the seismic upgrading of critical buildings

• Published in: International journal of disaster risk reduction 2021-08, Vol.62, p.102391, Article 102391
• Main Authors: Dolce, Mauro, Speranza, Elena, De Martino, Giuseppina, Conte, Chiara, Giordano, Francesco
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Safety index; Seismic prevention; Seismic risk; Seismic vulnerability; Statistical analysis; Strategic buildings
• ISSN: 2212-4209; 2212-4209
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102391

The Italian National Seismic Prevention Plan (NSPP) was issued following the destructive 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, with a total endowment of 965 million euros granted by law, under the coordination of the Italian Civil Protection Department (ICPD). The NSPP addresses seismic risk reduction according to a broad view, through multi-task programs. Among the measures granted by NSPP, one is devoted to the seismic retrofit of strategic or critical public buildings and infrastructures, whose damage or collapse may affect emergency management as well as produce high consequences in terms of human lives. The paper provides a preliminary assessment of such seismic prevention measure, through some statistical elaborations on a sample of around 1000 interventions, 375 of which so far concluded. The analyses carried out on this sample provide interesting information to verify the effectiveness of the measure as well as to enhance further actions similarly purposed. Analyses on seismic risk indices of critical buildings included in the NSPP are presented and discussed in the paper, together with an early analysis of costs and benefits associated with different structural types, and intervention types. The results obtained highlight interesting aspects in terms of seismic safety increases and marginal costs for the masonry and reinforced concrete buildings of the considered sample. These preliminary results, though requiring further calibrations on the larger datasets foreseen in the future, provide useful hints to envisage how they could be used in the definition of future strategies for seismic risk reduction. To this aim, a final paragraph provides an exemplification and a simplified procedure based on the findings shown in the paper, for comparing costs and benefits of different strategies aimed at reducing the risk of a given portfolio of buildings.