Seismic emergency system evaluation: The role of seismic hazard and local effects

Abstract The emergency management system is a complex network consisting of structural components, such as buildings, infrastructure and emergency areas, and non-structural elements, such as procedures, emergency workers, information management, etc. This document describes the evaluation of only its structural components. The system was adopted at the territorial scale and is defined by a multi-municipality area extension. This paper presents a methodology for the probabilistic evaluation of operating the emergency structural system in the case of a seismic event occurrence and, in detail, it highlights the methodology for calculating the seismic hazard including seismic local effects (amplification and permanent co-seismic effects). Systemic seismic risk and associated impact were considered in a rigorous and unified way. Moreover, the importance of the interconnection and interdependence between elements at risk belonging to the same system and between different networks at urban or territorial scales is well known. The aim of the proposed methodology is to evaluate the operational losses of an emergency system considering the connections between the components of the system, contributing, in an original way, to the estimation of the seismic effects. The fundamental characteristics of this calculation are: • Estimating ground motion amplification at the territorial scale using a Vs30 from a probabilistic map obtained with the seismic microzonation national database; • Estimating shaking scenarios in terms of PGA and PGV depending on the Vs30; • Co-seismic permanent failure and deformations (landslide and liquefaction) evaluated with regression logistic methods. Finally, a case study is presented showing the application of the methodology on a real emergency system in an area of southern Italy.