The cities are a complex system wherein urban, social – economic and policies strategy overlaps. These complex elements interact each other in a continuous way, making complex governance and making it more complex when risks must be managed. In next years, much research have been carried out in order to define effective management emergency strategies. Their application has showed good results in particular on short periods (little days – some months). On the contrary, in scientific community many doubts have been born in recent past about scientists' ability to contribute to a real risk mitigation well before the occurrence of the earthquake. Exposure investigations are often not accurate about the real economic impact of events. More accurate investigations could show as more specific policies to risk mitigation (even expensive) could lead to in limited economic and social impacts. In recent Italian earthquakes damage suffered by buildings (private and public) have been the main reasons of losses while system resilience, as the capacity of a certain system to adapt to new and negative condition, has been generally inexistent. On long terms, the return to normal conditions has been determined by considerable economic investments. If these resource has been used in mitigation policies would have produced significant economic growth and avoided many casualties. Resilient cities are possible only if it is connected to a set of strategies aiming to reduce vulnerability and maintaining characteristics of resilience of the considered elements. At present, the relation among resilient city, government and planning tools is not clear. Some critical issue have been reported in previous work of the authors. In this paper, some considerations about recent Italian earthquakes and their consequence will be made considering some opening questions and future directions of research.

Resilient cities: lesson from recent Italian earthquakes

VONA, Marco;HARABAGLIA, Paolo;MURGANTE, BENIAMINO
2013-01-01

Abstract

The cities are a complex system wherein urban, social – economic and policies strategy overlaps. These complex elements interact each other in a continuous way, making complex governance and making it more complex when risks must be managed. In next years, much research have been carried out in order to define effective management emergency strategies. Their application has showed good results in particular on short periods (little days – some months). On the contrary, in scientific community many doubts have been born in recent past about scientists' ability to contribute to a real risk mitigation well before the occurrence of the earthquake. Exposure investigations are often not accurate about the real economic impact of events. More accurate investigations could show as more specific policies to risk mitigation (even expensive) could lead to in limited economic and social impacts. In recent Italian earthquakes damage suffered by buildings (private and public) have been the main reasons of losses while system resilience, as the capacity of a certain system to adapt to new and negative condition, has been generally inexistent. On long terms, the return to normal conditions has been determined by considerable economic investments. If these resource has been used in mitigation policies would have produced significant economic growth and avoided many casualties. Resilient cities are possible only if it is connected to a set of strategies aiming to reduce vulnerability and maintaining characteristics of resilience of the considered elements. At present, the relation among resilient city, government and planning tools is not clear. Some critical issue have been reported in previous work of the authors. In this paper, some considerations about recent Italian earthquakes and their consequence will be made considering some opening questions and future directions of research.
2013
9783902749048
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11563/55479
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