Guest editorial to the special issue—Seismic risk assessment in Italy

Abstract

The most recent National Risk Assessment in Italy was issued by the Italian Civil Protection Department in 2018 (ICPD 2018), coherently with EU decision 1313/2013 and responding to the specific requirement of the “Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030” to periodically adjourn the assessment of disaster risk. As required by the Civil Protection Code in Italy (Decree Law n.1 of 2/1/2018), risk assessment should not only be based on a robust scientific base, but it should also achieve consensus by a wide scientific audience. Starting from these premises, the National Risk Assessment 2018, from now on indicated as NRA 2018, was prepared with significant support of the scientific community, involving the competence centers of the Italian Civil Protection Department. The document, presenting an overview of potential major disasters in Italy, analyzed the natural risks that are of interest for the civil protection, namely: seismic, volcanic, tsunami, hydraulic, hydro-geological, adverse meteorological events, droughts and forest fires. Concerning the analysis of seismic risk in Italy, it can build upon the experience acquired and the knowledge systematization achieved in previous studies dealing with nation-wide seismic risk assessment. Those studies include, among other, the risk maps produced by the Italian Seismic Service (Lucantoni et al. 2001) and their updated version presented in Bramerini and Di Pasquale (2008) that are a reference for a coherent nationwide probabilistic assessment, suitably combining hazard and vulnerability models, as well as exposure data for the whole territory. The update proposed for seismic risk assessment in the framework of NRA 2018 takes into account the advancements achieved by the scientific community, that has made several enhancements in the fields of hazard, vulnerability and exposure assessment. Concerning seismic hazard, the MPS04 model (Stucchi et al. 2004, 2011), providing probabilistic seismic hazard assessment for Italy, was officially adopted as reference model in the Prime Minister Ordinance (OPCM 2006) and also specifically addressed for the use in engineering applications by national technical codes (NNT 2008, 2018). This is the hazard model that was employed for the NRA 2018.