Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-023-01619-9

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Influence of local site effects on seismic risk maps

and ranking of Italian municipalities

Fabio Sabetta1   · Gabriele Fiorentino2   · Flavio Bocchi3 · Martina Sinibaldi1 ·

Gaetano Falcone4,5   · Amerigo Mendicelli4 

Received: 13 September 2022 / Accepted: 10 January 2023 / Published online: 3 February 2023
© The Author(s) 2023

Abstract
The latest studies concerning seismic risk assessment in Italy were developed without
considering the site geo-lithological effects, thus limiting the assessment to rock soil type.
In this study, for the evaluation of site amplification effects, we used the results of recent
works based on the Italian seismic microzonation data. As this first study is performed
for the entire Italian territory at the municipality scale, the site amplification factors (AFs)
have been assigned to the chief town of each of the 7715 Italian municipalities, assuming
that the building stock is concentrated in that small area. The AFs have been compared
with those foreseen by the Italian building code (NTC2018). The PGA amplification
with the new AFs ranges from 1 to 2.2 bringing to an average increase of 75% in the
hazard, compared to 27% if using the NTC2018 amplification. The seismic risk has been
evaluated using the probabilistic hazard assessment adopted in the NTC2018 and recent
vulnerability/exposure models developed for Italy. The residential building stock was
subdivided into 5 vulnerability classes (3 for masonry and 2 for concrete) derived from the
national census data and further refined using the construction age and building height. The
results show that, for a rock site condition, the loss estimates are comparable with those of
previous works in terms of casualties, homeless, and economic damage. The introduction
of the site effects brings to a significant increase in the expected losses resulting higher
than the historical data retrieved from a careful analysis of the major Italian earthquakes.
This suggests the importance of developing new fragility curves based on updated AFs. To
support the implementation of risk reduction programs, a seismic risk index is introduced,
allowing a municipality ranking by risk, a cost estimation of the seismic retrofitting in the
highest risk municipalities, and an assessment of the consequent risk reduction.

Keywords  Seismic hazard · Seismic risk · Site effects · Fragility curves · Loss assessment ·
Risk reduction programs

* Gabriele Fiorentino
gabriele.fiorentino@bristol.ac.uk
Extended author information available on the last page of the article

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
 2442 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

1 Introduction

Italy is one of the countries with the highest seismic risk in Europe, due to the frequency of
earthquakes that have historically affected its territory and to the intensity reached by some
of them, causing extensive social and economic losses, mainly due to the high population
density and to the considerable fragility of the building stock (Valensise et  al. 2017). It
follows that the major issue in Italy does not concern the design of new buildings, but
rather the high vulnerability of existing ones which may be reduced with appropriate and
well-known techniques such as strengthening, retrofitting, and base isolation.
The Italian annual expenditure for the recovery from past seismic events, an average
of €3 billion (Camera dei Deputati 2009; Senato della Repubblica 2017), is much larger
than that employed for the prevention of losses for future ones. Considering the very
large amount of funds required to strengthen/retrofit the whole Italian building stock, it is
essential to establish a priority scale of intervention through a well-grounded and reliable
seismic risk assessment providing the extent of damage to people and buildings expected
for future earthquakes. These are also key factors for insurance and reinsurance companies
(Goda et al. 2014).
The first seismic risk maps developed in Italy at national scale date back to 1996
(GNDT-ING-SSN 1996). These maps represented the first attempt to express the seismic
risk as a combination of hazard, vulnerability and exposure, even if they had not been
included in peer-reviewed journal articles. The exposure model represented the main
novelty of that study, and it was based on population and buildings data collected in the
1991 census by ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics). The latest census datasets
(ISTAT 2001, 2011) do not differ significantly from the study of 1991 and are still used in
recent risk assessments for their homogeneity and completeness over the national territory.
Crowley et  al. (2009) provided a complete report of the studies on Italian seismic
risk maps up to 2009. The report compares several works, such as the risk maps of the
Italian Seismic Service (Lucantoni et al. 2001) making use of seismic hazard assessments
(Albarello et  al. 2000), damage probability matrices and fragility curves (Sabetta et  al.
1998; Di Pasquale et  al. 2005), the SAVE project (Zuccaro 2004), the risk assessment
performed with new analytical vulnerability models (Borzi et  al. 2008). More recently,
several other studies were published, such as those of Rota et  al. (2011), Asprone et  al.
(2013), Zanini et al. (2019), and the study realized by the Global Earthquake Model (GEM)
foundation (GEM 2019; Silva et al. 2020).
The latest comprehensive study concerning Seismic risk studies of Italian residential
buildings is provided by Dolce et al. (2020). Six research units, coordinated by the Italian
Department of Civil Protection, updated the risk maps of the Italian residential building
stock providing six different vulnerability/exposure models (four for masonry buildings
and two for RC buildings). The paper describes in detail the adopted methodology and
presents the main results in terms of expected damage and impact measures (unusable
buildings, homeless, casualties, direct economic losses). As acknowledged by the authors
themselves, the study still presents some drawbacks that could underestimate the predicted
losses, in particular regarding the consideration of the uncertainties and the reference to a
soil of type A only (outcropping rock characterized by flat topography).
The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects on the Italian seismic risk maps of
the inclusion of site geo-lithological amplification in the hazard assessment (Falcone
et  al. 2021; Mendicelli et  al. 2022) comparing the results with the work by Dolce
et  al. (2020) taken as benchmark. Furthermore, an updated analysis of real data from

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2443

historical earthquakes is presented in terms of casualties, homeless and economic

losses. Finally, a seismic risk index is introduced, resulting nearly independent from
the site amplification. It allows a ranking by risk of the Italian municipalities, a cost
estimation of the seismic retrofitting of the most vulnerable buildings, and an evaluation
of the consequent risk reduction.

2 Methodology

Seismic risk can be defined as a measure of the damage expected at a given region of
interest in a certain time interval and it can be represented by the convolution of hazard,
vulnerability and exposure (Fig. 1). Seismic hazard expresses the probability of occur-
rence of a given earthquake or ground motion and it can be obtained by applying the
Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Assessment (PSHA, Cornell 1968) which provides seis-
mic hazard curves giving λIM (frequency of exceedance) as a function of im, (inten-
sity measure of the seismic events, in our case PGA). An example of hazard curves is
illustrated in the left plot of Fig.  1 for the Italian municipalities of Firenze, L’Aquila
and Napoli. The seismic vulnerability (in our case limited to residential buildings) rep-
resents the potential of a structure to undergo a given level of damage and it is gener-
ally described through fragility curves, expressing the probability of reaching different
levels of damage given the PGA (central plot in Fig. 1). The exposure refers to all the
assets which are subjected to the seismic risk in a particular area. In case of the build-
ing stock, a building inventory is required providing the number of buildings, dwellings,
residents and the percentage distribution in the different vulnerability classes (right plot
in Fig. 1).
The mean annual rate λk of reaching or exceeding a damage state Dk may be
expressed as:

Fig. 1  Components of seismic risk and their combination

13
 2444 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

∫
𝜆k = P(Dk |im) ⋅ ||d𝜆IM (im)|| (1)
0

which numerically becomes:

n−1
∑ [ ( )] [ ( ( ))]
𝜆k = 0.5 ⋅ P Dk |imi ) + P(Dk |imi+1 ⋅ 𝜆IM imi ) − 𝜆IM imi+1 (2)
i=1

where P(Dk|im) is provided by the fragility curve. It expresses the probability of getting
a damage state ≥ Dk as a consequence of a seismic event with seismic intensity im for
buildings of a particular class of vulnerability. λIM is the mean annual exceedance frequency
of the intensity im.
The calculation should be repeated for each vulnerability class of the building
inventory and the results should be combined considering the proportion of each class in
the considered asset and summed over the different classes to get the mean annual rate of
reaching or exceeding a given damage state in a given site or municipality. The λk can be
used to compute the probability pk to reach or exceed the damage state Dk in a time interval
of t years under the hypothesis that the occurrence of events is a Poisson process:

pk (in t years) = 1 − e−𝜆k ⋅t (3)

Equation  (3) provides the unconditional seismic risk in a time interval t (expressed in
years) for a damage state Dk. For small values of λk, as is usually the case, and t = 1 year,
pk ≈ λk. The mean annual probability of reaching or exceeding the different damage states
for all the buildings classes can be used to provide an estimate of the consequences of an
earthquake in terms of economic, human, and social losses.
In our study, as hazard curves referred to outcropping rock, we used the probabilistic
assessment MPS04 (Stucchi et  al. 2004, 2011) that is the current reference for seismic
hazard studies in Italy and is adopted by the Italian building code (NTC2018). For
vulnerability we adopted the fragility curves implemented by Rosti et  al. (2020a, b).
For exposure we used the building and population census dataset (ISTAT 2011) giving
information on construction age, building material, and number of storeys of the buildings.

3 Hazard and site effects

A substantial improvement in the evaluation of the geo-lithological site amplification

effects in Italy has been given by the recent works by Mori et al. (2020) and Falcone et al.
(2021). The first work, following the methodology suggested by Iwahashi et al. (2018) for
a site classification using digital elevation models (DEM), has derived a V ­ S30 map for Italy
starting from the geomorphological classes and integrating a large amount of data from the
Italian seismic microzonation dataset (DPC 2018, www.​webms.​it), consisting of 16,000
profiles of shear wave velocity from geophysical surveys and 44,000 logs from continuous
coring boreholes. Mori and co-authors found a proxy dependence of ­VS30 on slope gradient
and elevation through a regression model for each geomorphological class. The estimation
of ­VS30 for the Italian territory provided by their study is particularly accurate and provides
a good correlation between ­VS30, morphological classes and subsoil lithologies.

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2445

In Fig. 2 the new V­ S30 map from the study of Mori and co-workers is compared with
that of Michelini et al. (2008), used so far for the implementation of the shakemaps which
have been widely used by the Italian engineering community for the evaluation of fragility
curves in building vulnerability assessment. It is worth noting that Sardinia is not included
in the present work because of its negligible value of seismic hazard (Stucchi et al. 2004).
The methodology of Michelini and co-workers is based on soil classification derived from
the 1:100,000 geological map of Italy (Amanti et al. 2008) and from the topographic slope
(Wald and Allen 2007). The differences between the two maps are substantial. In par-
ticular, in the map of Michelini et  al. most of the territory is classified as having a V
­ S30
greater or equal to 800 m/s whereas in the new map less than 3% of the territory has a ­VS30
greater than 760 m/s and about 50% is in the range 360–480 m/s. In the study by Mori et al.
(2020) most sites previously considered as rock consists actually of fractured rocks with
­VS30 < 800 m/s.
The works by Falcone et  al. (2021) and Mendicelli et  al. (2022) introduced new geo-
lithological amplification factors. They are based on the equivalent visco-elastic method
allowing to perform 30 million one-dimensional local site response coming from 2
million soil columns (varying V ­ S profile, depth to the seismic bedrock and nonlinear
behavior of soils) times 15 input motions. Such input motions were determined in terms
of response spectra, with return period of 475  years, selected according to the Italian
seismic hazard (Stucchi et al. 2004) and applied to 42 geomorphological clusters resulting
in a set of 630 response spectra. The V ­ S profiles were stochastically obtained from the
microzonation studies (DPC 2018) with the procedure described in Romagnoli et  al.
(2022). The Amplification Factors (AFs) obtained with that procedure allow to account for
the nonlinear response of soils, the ­VS profile, the depth to seismic bedrock and the site-
specific seismic hazard.

Fig. 2  a New ­VS30 map for Italy based on seismic microzonation data (Mori et al. 2020). b ­VS30 map used
for the implementation of Shakemaps (Michelini et al. 2008)

13
 2446 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Figure 3a shows the distribution of the AFs of the PGA, for a 475 years return period
(Tr), assigned to the chief town of each of the 7715 Italian municipalities excluding Sar-
dinia (ISTAT 2011). The PGA value at the municipality is derived, as for the Italian build-
ing code (NTC2018), with an interpolation of the four grid points of the MPS04 map
(Stucchi et al. 2004) closest to the coordinates of the chief town. The assumption of a sin-
gle AF for the entire municipality represents a rough approximation, and it will be applied
also to the exposure and risk. This is unavoidable at the scale adopted in this study and
justified by the fact that the building stock data are concentrated in the relatively small area
of the chief town. For the sake of simplicity, in these maps we refer only to Tr = 475 years.
Different return periods have been considered when using the hazard curves for the risk
assessment, as shown in Fig. 6b. Only 16 municipalities (i.e. 0.19% of the total) have an
AF slightly lower than 1. The PGA amplification factor ranges from 1 to 2.2, with the high-
est values in Northwestern Italy and the lowest in the eastern parts of the Po Plain and Pug-
lia region. The low AFs in the Po plain, where the V ­ S is very low (Fig. 2), are due to the
high thickness of the deposits that, according to the simplified rule f­0 = ­VS/(4·H), amplify
lower frequencies with respect to those associated to PGA.
Figure  3b shows the AFs calculated with the formula foreseen by the NTC2018 and
the ­VS30 values provided by Mori et  al. (2020), as illustrated in Table  1. The differ-
ence with Fig. 3a is substantial because 76% of the municipalities fall in the soil class B
(360 ≤ ­VS30 ≤ 800 m/s) and the upper limit of amplification imposed by NTC2018 for that
class is 1.2. In the AF range 1.6–1.7 there are no municipalities because belonging to soil
class C where the upper limit of NTC2018 is 1.5. It follows that the AF averaged over all
the municipalities of the NTC2018 is 1.27, compared to 1.75 of this study adopting the
AFs proposed by Mendicelli et al. (2022). The low AF values for the soil class D (1.34 in
the last column of Table 1) are justified by the trend of the AF-VS30 curve shown in Fig. 4a.

Fig. 3  Map of the PGA AFs for 475 years return period assigned to the chief town of each of 7715 Italian
municipalities: a median values according to Mendicelli et al. (2022); b amplification factors foreseen by
the Italian building code. The number of municipalities falling in each AF interval is reported in square
brackets

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2447

Table 1  Breakdown of the Italian municipalities in the different soil classes foreseen by the Italian building
code (NTC2018)
Soil class No. of municip % Formula NTC2018 Average AF Average AF
NTC2018 this study

(A) ­VS30 > 800 m/s 2 0.03 1.0 1.00 0.96

(B) 360 ≤ ­VS30 ≤ 800 m/s 5849 75.81 1.0 ≤ 1.4–0.4·Fo·ag ≤ 1.2 1.19 1.75
(C) 180 ≤ ­VS30 < 360 m/s 1786 23.15 1.0 ≤ 1.7–0.6·Fo·ag ≤ 1.5 1.48 1.76
(D) ­VS30 < 180 m/s 78 1.01 0.9 ≤ 2.4–1.5·Fo·ag ≤ 1.8 1.80 1.34
Total municipalities 7715 100 1.27 1.75

The amplification factors calculated with the NTC2018 formula are compared, in the last two columns, to
those adopted in this study (Mendicelli et al. 2022)

Fig. 4  Correlation between AF and ­VS30: a AF of PGA for the 7715 Italian municipalities according to the
methodology by Mendicelli et al. (2022) with different return periods; solid lines are the interpolation with
a fourth order polynomial; b AF of PGA versus the four soil classes (A, B, C, D) foreseen by the Italian
building code at 475 years return period, for three Italian cities (number in parenthesis refer to PGA with
10% exceedance probability in 50 years); the AFs used in the Italian shakemaps (Michelini et al. 2008) are
reported (triangles) for low and high acceleration input; the AFs of the GMPE by Bindi et al. (2014) are
shown with orange square markers

In this study the AFs have been calculated for each of the 9 earthquake return periods (Tr)
given in Stucchi et al. (2011) and in the NTC2018. Figure 4 shows the plots of AF versus
­VS30 from different sources. In Fig. 4a, the PGA-AFs of the Italian municipalities resulting
from the study by Mendicelli et al. (2022) are plotted for the hazard levels corresponding to
three return periods. The plots show a linear increase up to about 300–400 m/s, while they
become scattered and decreasing at lower ­VS30 values due to the nonlinear soil behavior.
This effect is more pronounced for a Tr of 2475 years due to its greater PGA as shown
by the interpolating functions. Figure 4b shows the AF versus V ­ S30 trend provided by the
NTC2018 in case of two cities, Milano and L’Aquila, characterized by low and high seis-
mic hazard, respectively. The four soil classes considered by the code have been assigned
to the following V ­ S30 reference values: (A) 900 m/s; (B) 600 m/s; (C) 300 m/s; (D) 150
m/s. In addition, Fig. 4b also reports the AFs proposed by Michelini et al. (2008), used for
the implementation of the shakemaps and fragility curves. It is evident that, in particular
for high accelerations, the AFs used in the shakemaps (Michelini et al. 2008) are signifi-
cantly lower than those adopted in this study. This brings to a large increase of the damage

13
 2448 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

probability in the fragility curves as described in the following sections. It is worth noting
that, in the cited papers by Falcone and Mendicelli, the AFs deriving from the GMPE by
Bindi et al. (2014), have been compared with those resulting from site-specific 1D simu-
lations for a testing dataset of about 4500 Italian locations. The AFs used in that studies
proved to be consistent with the dataset, while the GMPE has limited information about
the geophysical characteristics of the strong motion stations and does not consider the non-
linear soil response and the effective depth to the seismic bedrock. Figure 4b shows that
the AFs foreseen by the GMPE of Bindi et al. (2014) are lower than those of the NTC2018
code and of this study.
Figure  5 shows the effects of the introduction of the site amplification in the hazard
map MPS04 (Stucchi et al. 2004), with PGA values assigned to the chief town of each of
7715 municipalities (Sabetta 2021). The maximum PGA increases from 0.28 g (municipal-
ity of Ferla in Eastern Sicily) to 0.47 g (municipality of Scigliano in Calabria). The average
increase due to the geo-lithological amplification over the national territory is 75%.
The estimation of the risk requires to use the hazard curves with the relative epistemic
uncertainty (Meletti and Montaldo 2007) as shown in Fig. 6a for the cities of Biella and
L’Aquila. The nine points for which the curves are plotted have been interpolated, at a
step of 0.001 g, with a best fit function as shown by the correlation index ­R2 reported in
Fig.  6a. To avoid unrealistic high values of the losses due to very low levels of ground
shaking associated with high probability of exceedance and non-zero damage probability
(Dolce et al. 2020), the hazard curves were truncated at values lower than 0.03 g (red line
in Fig. 6a). Considering the limited proportion of municipalities with PGA < 0.03 g at the
lower value of the hazard curves (38% without site amplification and 8% when amplifica-
tion is considered), the decrease in losses due to the truncation was less than 10%. The
uncertainty in the median hazard, represented by the ± σ dashed lines, is in the order of
10–15% for high hazard municipalities and 20–25% for low hazard ones. It results rather

Fig. 5  a Italian seismic hazard map MPS04 (rock type of soil) corresponding to 475  years return period
with PGA values assigned to the chief town of 7715 municipalities, excluding Sardinia. b Effect of the
introduction of the geo-lithological site amplification factor AF according to Mendicelli et al. (2022)

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2449

Fig. 6  a Hazard curves for the cities of Biella and L’Aquila with the relative uncertainty (±σ, dotted lines);
the analytical functions adopted to interpolate the data are reported in the plot with their corresponding cor-
relation index ­R2; b AF as a function of the earthquake return period for some cities

low, e.g. compared to the European map ESHM20 (Danciu et al. 2021), probably due to
the only sixteen branches logic tree used in the implementation of the MPS04 map (Stucchi
et al. 2004). To include the site effects, the hazard values for rock have been multiplied by
the AF varying with Tr, as shown in Fig. 6b for some representative cities. Even if more
advanced approaches could be used for including nonlinear soil-site effects in probabilistic
seismic-hazard (Bazzurro and Cornell 2004) in this study, for the sake of conciseness, we
have not considered the uncertainty related to the geo-lithological site amplification, hence,
only the 50th percentile of the AFs distribution was retrieved from the study of Mendicelli
et al. (2022).

4 Exposure: building inventory and vulnerability classes

According to the 15th ISTAT Census of population and housing (ISTAT 2011), in 2011
there were 12,187,698 residential buildings for a total of 31,208,161 dwellings. With
respect to the age of the housing stock, it emerges that 53.7% of dwellings have been built
before 1970, a further 31% was built in 1971–1990 and 7.4% in the period 1991–2000.
The remaining 7.9% of the housing stock was built between 2001 and 2011. The homes
occupied by resident people are 24.1 million (23.4 million without Sardinia), equal to
77.3% of the total, while seven million are unoccupied (holiday homes, homes occupied by
non-residents, empty homes). For evaluating the exposure, we considered the census data
concerning the construction age, number of storeys, and building material (masonry M,
reinforced concrete RC, other O). As the adopted fragility curves (Rosti et al. 2020a, b) are
relative only to M and RC, it was necessary to subdivide the category that ISTAT indicates
as O, i.e., all the buildings with a mixed load-bearing structure and a small percentage of
steel and timber buildings, between the M and RC classes. To do this, it has been used the
criterion suggested by Dolce et al. (2020) based on the percentage of O in each town, the
period of construction and the number of floors. Using the classification criteria reported by
Rosti et al. (2020a, b), the residential buildings have been divided into twelve vulnerability
classes, three for masonry (A, B, C1) further subdivided in two height classes, and two

13
 2450 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

for reinforced concrete (C2, D) further subdivided in three height classes. Regarding the
masonry, the breakdown into classes is based on the building age and number of floors, as
illustrated in Table 2, where L and MH are the classes of height considered (1–2 floors and
3 or more floors respectively).
The RC, according to Rosti et al. (2020b), has been divided in two classes assuming the
year 1981 as a turning point in the application of the Italian seismic legislation. The vulner-
ability class C2 includes buildings designed essentially for gravitational loads (≤ 1981) while
the vulnerability class D includes buildings with seismic design (> 1981) as illustrated in
Table 3.
Each vulnerability class has been further refined based on the height of the building
(L = 1–2 floors, M = 3 floors, H = 4 or more floors). Classes A, B, C1 correspond to masonry
of poor, average, and good quality, respectively. Classes C2, D correspond to RC building
without and with seismic design, respectively. For the risk assessment, given that the popula-
tion exposure is relevant, the same class breakdown has been applied to the dwellings belong-
ing to each building, because the ISTAT census database distinguishes between inhabited and
non-inhabited buildings in terms of dwellings. Since the number of dwellings in a building is
highly variable, with typically more dwellings in a RC building with respect to a M building,
the classification in terms of dwellings is more appropriate to provide a clearer picture of the
actual vulnerability distribution and it has been used in the loss assessment. Figure 7 shows
the distribution of the residential dwellings in the vulnerability classes regardless of the build-
ing height. The masonry dwellings represent 46% of the total and the largest vulnerability
class (32%) is C2 (RC built before 1981).
Figure 8 shows the percentage distribution of the dwellings belonging to the highest and
lowest vulnerability classes regardless of the building height, respectively class A (masonry
built mostly before 1945) and class D (RC built after 1981).
The most vulnerable masonry houses are concentrated in North-Western and Central Italy
(Fig. 8a). In Fig. 8b, it can be observed (large number of seismically designed buildings – class
D) the effect of the reconstruction after the Irpinia 1980 earthquake (south-east of Naples) and
the Belice 1968 earthquake (south of Palermo) which after 1981 was still in progress. The
census data refer to 2011, so the beneficial effects given by the reconstruction after the 2009
L’Aquila earthquake are limited.

5 Fragility curves

Fragility curves represent a fundamental tool for estimating the possible damage resulting
from seismic events. With reference to a certain type of building, they express the probabil-
ity of reaching or exceeding the different Damage States (DS) as a function of the intensity
of the earthquake shaking. In the last years, many authors have proposed fragility curves
for Italy, both for reinforced concrete and masonry buildings. An exhaustive review of all
the studies on fragility curves is beyond the scope of this work. The work by da Porto et al.
(2021) provides an overview of the fragility models used by the Italian Department of Civil
Protection (IDPC) in the updated version of the National Risk Assessment (IDPC 2018).
The seismic risk evaluation was carried out with the IRMA platform (Borzi et al. 2021),
implementing six different vulnerability models. Among the four models for masonry
buildings, three used empirical or semi-empirical methods (Lagomarsino et al. 2021, Rosti

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2451

Table 2  Distribution of the masonry building stock into the vulnerability classes as a function of building
age and class of height (Rosti et al. 2020a)
Class of Vulnerability Construction period
height class
 < 1919 (%) 1919—45 (%) 1946—61 (%) 1962—71 (%) 1972—81 (%) > 1981 (%)

L A 86 45 9 5 0 0
B 0 44 59 4 0 0
C1 14 11 32 91 100 100
MH A 97 22 0 0 0 0
B 0 78 75 18 0 0
C1 3 0 25 82 100 100

Table 3  Distribution of the Class of height Vulnerability class

reinforced concrete building
stock into the vulnerability C2 ≤ 1981 (%) D > 1981 (%)
classes as a function of class of
height and building age (Rosti L 55 61
et al. 2020b)
M 26 27
H 19 12

Fig. 7  Distribution of the
inhabited residential dwell-
ings (excluding Sardinia) in the
vulnerability classes regardless
of the building height (A, B,
C1 masonry; C2, D reinforced
concrete)

et  al. 2020a, Zuccaro et  al. 2021) and one adopted a mechanical approach (Donà et  al.
2021). Two models were used for RC buildings, one empirical (Rosti et  al. 2020b) and
one mechanical (Borzi et  al. 2020). Other recent models are those by Del Gaudio et  al.
(2020), based on a dataset taken from the platform Da.D.O., and the works by Zucconi
et al. (2022a, b). It is worth noting that most of the fragility models adopted in Italy use the
PGA taken from the shakemaps by Michelini et al. (2008) as input ground motion.
In this study we adopted the fragility curves proposed by Rosti et al. (2020a, b). These
two studies implement an empirical model of fragility obtained by statistically process-
ing the damage data of Irpinia 1980 and L’Aquila 2009 earthquakes which were selected
for the availability of complete post-earthquake field surveys (Dolce et al. 2019) including

13
 2452 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Fig. 8  Percentage distribution of the dwellings belonging to the highest and lowest vulnerability class
regardless of the building height: a masonry built mostly before 1945 (class A); b reinforced concrete built
after 1981 (class D)

undamaged buildings, and for the lack of significant aftershocks avoiding the problem of
the cumulated damage. Furthermore, the cited works adopt empirical models that are more
suitable for masonry buildings representing almost half of the building stock in Italy.
The curves are described by a cumulative lognormal distribution and DS are taken from
the five damage states (from DS1 slight or negligible damage to DS5 collapse) of the Euro-
pean Macroseismic Scale (EMS-98, Grünthal 1998). The comparison of the site AFs used
in this work (Fig. 4a) with those of Michelini 2008 (Fig. 4b) reveals that the latter provide
significantly lower values, thus leading to a significant increase of the damage probability
as it will be shown later. Figure  9 compares the fragility curves for some DS and vul-
nerability classes previously described. It is worth noting that in some cases the curves
intersect, e.g., the curves C2-H (concrete without seismic design, 4 or more floors) at high
PGAs and for damage states 3 and 5, exceed the values of poor-quality masonry A-MH.

6 Seismic risk and damage states

The risk calculation has been performed for each of the 7715 Italian municipalities accord-
ing to Eqs. (2) and (3) and considering the dwellings distribution in the different vulner-
ability classes described in Sect. 4. Table 4 shows the resulting estimates in terms of the
number of dwellings (thousands) affected by each damage state in a time frame of 1 and
50 years. The results, if the site amplification is not considered, are comparable with those
provided in the study of Dolce et al. (2020) which considered only rock sites. Figure  10
shows the unconditional risk in a period of one year corresponding to the average expected
probability of damage states DS1 and DS5 including the site amplification with the AFs
of Mendicelli et  al. (2022). The risk of collapse (DS5) has obviously lower values with

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2453

Fig. 9  Fragility curves from

Rosti et al. (2020a, b) for
masonry (A) and concrete (C2,
D) in case of medium-height
buildings (MH, H) and damage
states DS3, DS5

respect to DS1 and it is concentrated in Central and Southern Italy where both the ampli-
fied PGA and the building vulnerability are the highest.

7 Impact indicators

The definition of specific impact indicators based on seismic risk assessment can be con-
venient in the field of civil protection, with possible application to response and mitigation
strategies, as well as for emergency planning. In this study, we estimated the number of
dwellings resulting unusable based on existing risk studies for Italy (Lucantoni et al. 2001;
Bramerini and Di Pasquale 2008; Zuccaro and Cacace 2011; Dolce et al. 2020). In particu-
lar, for the unusable dwellings, we adopted the formulation given by Dolce et  al. (2020)
for the long-term unavailability which gives values that are closer to field surveys data.
The number of homeless was derived from the resident people in the unusable dwellings
also considering the people not counted as victims (99% DS4, 90% DS5). The probability
of injury or death of the building occupants has been calculated as a function of dwell-
ing damage states DS4 and DS5, as proposed by Lucantoni et al. (2001) and subsequently
developed by Zuccaro and Cacace (2011) and Dolce et al. (2020).
The following impact indicators have been defined for each Italian municipality consid-
ering the number of dwellings and resident people belonging to each damage state, indi-
cated by Dw_DSi and Res_DSi, respectively, for the ith damage state:

Table 4  Expected number of dwellings (thousands) affected in 1 and 50 years by the considered five dam-
age states compared with the results of Dolce et al. (2020)
DS1 DS2 DS3 DS4 DS5

This study (1 year) without site amplification 103.6 40.0 20.3 6.3 1.6
Dolce et al. (2020) 1 year 143.1 38.7 17.8 6.1 2.1
This study (50 years) without site amplification 4412.5 1853.4 974.2 312.4 77.5
Dolce et al. (2020) 50 years 4199.7 1436.0 783.0 290.9 103.6

13
 2454 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Fig. 10  Unconditional risk in a time frame of one year including site amplification from Mendicelli et al.
(2022): a average expected probability of damage state DS1 (slight or negligible damage); b probability of
damage state DS5 (collapse)

• expected number of unusable dwellings in the long term = 0.6·Dw_DS3 + Dw_DS4.

• expected number of homeless = 0.6·Res_DS3 + 0.99·Res_DS4 + 0.9·Res_DS5.
• expected number of victims = 0.01·Res_DS4 + 0.1·Res_DS5.
• expected number of injured = 0.05·Res_DS4 + 0.3·Res_DS5.

Figure  11 shows the percentage of dwellings of each municipality expected to become

unusable in a period of 1  year. If the site amplification is not included, the maximum
values are 0.4–0.7%; when site effects are considered, the percentage of unusable dwellings
reaches values higher than 1% per year in some municipalities of Central Italy.
Table 5 reports the expected losses over the national territory in a time frame of 1 year
obtained averaging (probability of damage state) or summing (losses) the values relative to
the single municipalities.
If the site amplification is not included, the estimated losses are comparable with
those given by Dolce et  al. (2020) except for the number of homeless people, par-
ticularly high in that work because they were calculated considering the inhabitants
of the unusable dwellings expected both in the long term (0.6∙DS3 + DS4) and short
term (0.4∙DS2 + 0.4∙DS3). In Table  5 are reported the loss estimations obtained both
with the AFs of Mendicelli et al. (2022) and with those of the NTC2018. As expected,
considering the average AF of 1.75 for Mendicelli and 1.27 for NTC2018 discussed in
Sect. 3, the losses estimated with the latter are closer to those of rock site condition. As
shown in Fig. 3 and Table 1, the AFs of the NTC2018 group most of the municipalities
in few classes not catching adequately the spatial variability of the site amplification.
Furthermore, as discussed in Sect. 3, the AFs used in this study proved to be consistent
with the site-specific data. Therefore, in the following we will refer only to the AFs of
Mendicelli et al. (2022), using the term “soil”. It is worth noting that, due to the shape

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2455

of the fragility curves, the increase in damage estimation, going from 116% for DS1 to
307% for DS5 if the site amplification of Mendicelli et al. is included, is larger than the
average increase in PGA (75%). When the site effects are incorporated, the loss esti-
mates increase significantly both with respect to previous studies (Zanini et  al. 2019;
Dolce et  al. 2020) and in comparison with the historical data (see following section).
As discussed previously, this is mainly due to the fragility curves built using low PGA
values taken from shakemaps which adopt a simplified approach for the site amplifica-
tion. This underlines the need of a re-evaluation of fragility curves with the new site
amplification factors provided by Mendicelli et  al. (2022) and also adopting, besides
PGA, response spectral values as intensity measure.

8 Comparison with historical earthquakes

A crucial element for the assessment of the reliability of the loss estimates is the compari-
son with the real values surveyed in Italian earthquakes. Table 6 shows information about
medium-strong earthquakes of the last 54 years, which is the only period for which reli-
able data about homeless and economic damage are available. The last column of the table
reports the total cost in Million €, discounted to 2014, incurred by the Italian government
for the emergency management and the reconstruction of structures, infrastructures and
cultural heritage.
Cost data up to 2002 are taken from a report of the Italian House of Representatives
(Camera dei Deputati 2009). Data in italic are estimated from a linear regression with the
number of homeless for the 8 earthquakes for which the cost is available. Data relative to
the last three earthquakes, since 2009, come from a report of the Italian Senate (Senato

Fig. 11  Percentage of the unusable dwellings expected in a time frame of 1  year in each municipality: a
without site effects; b with site effects from Mendicelli et al. (2022)

13
 2456

13
Table 5  Unconditional risk in a time frame of 1 year: average expected values over the Italian territory
Annual prob. DS1 Annual prob. DS5 Unusable Homeless Victims Injured
dwellings (60%DS3 + 99%DS4 + 90%DS5) (1%DS4 + 10%DS5) (5%DS4 + 30%DS5)
(long-term)

Dolce et al. (2020) 15,635 78,602 505 1744

This study without site effects 3.80E−03 8.51E−05 18,534 48,921 540 1934
Site effects Mendicelli et al. (2022) 8.23E−03 3.47E−04 65,683 176,910 2493 8686
Site effects NTC2018 5.23E−03 1.44E−04 33,218 87,933 1072 3790
Relative increase due to 116 307 254 262 361 349
amplification Mendicelli et al.
(2022) (%)
Relative increase due to 38 69 79 80 99 96
amplification NTC2018 (%)
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2457

della Repubblica 2017). A more in-depth analysis of these data (not final because the
reconstructions are still in progress) reveals that 85% of the resources were destined to the
reconstruction of damaged or collapsed buildings, 8% to productive activities, 4% to public
administrations and 3% to emergency management.
The count of the victims, which should be more reliably reported in the historical
chronicles with respect to homeless and economical losses, is highly variable depending
on the period considered. The number of victims per year, which is 92 for the last 54 years,
increases up to 994 if counting since the beginning of XX century because in that case
are included Messina 1908 and Avezzano 1915 earthquakes summing up 113,000 victims,
about 94% of the total. Table 7 shows the victims of destructive earthquakes (intensity ≥ X
degree of MCS scale) considering the entire catalogue (Guidoboni et al. 2019) since 1169.
It is interesting to note that, as shown in Fig. 12a, these destructive earthquakes are concen-
trated essentially in Southern Italy. Considering that the Italian seismicity does not seem
to have had large modifications in the last 1000 years, as illustrated in Fig. 12b, the varia-
tion is mostly due to the social, demographic, and building characteristics of the historical
period considered and to the site where the earthquake happened (country or city). The
most reliable value is probably that reported in Table 7, averaging the short period varia-

Table 6  Victims, homeless and economic cost relative to 16 earthquakes of the last 54 years with an inten-
sity ≥ VII degree of MCS scale
Earthquake Date Mw Io MCS Victims Homeless Source Cost M€

Belice 15/01/1968 6.5 X 290 100,000 *** 9179

Tuscania 06/02/1971 5.2 VI–VII 20 4000 * 1807
Parmense 15/07/1971 5.7 VIII 1 1000 * 704
Ancona 14/06/1972 5.5 VIII 0 30,000 * 7112
Friuli 06/05/1976 6.5 X 978 200,000 * 18,540
Valnerina 19/09/1979 5.8 VIII–IX 5 25,000 * 6283
Irpinia 23/11/1980 6.8 X 2914 280,000 * 52,026
Appennino abruzzese 07/05/1984 5.8 VIII 0 6000 * 2381
Sicilia sud-orientale 13/12/1990 5.4 VII 12 15,000 * 4439
Umbria-Marche 26/09/1997 5.7 VIII 11 38,000 *** 13,463
Appennino Lucano 09/09/1998 5.5 VII 1 650 ** 525
Molise 31/10/2002 5.7 VII–VIII 30 3000 ** 1400
Salò 24/11/2004 5.0 VII–VIII 0 2000 ** 1128
L’Aquila 06/04/2009 6.3 IX–X 309 67,460 **** 17,458
Emilia 29/05/2012 6.0 VII–VIII 17 16,520 ** 8171
Italia centrale 24/08/2016 6.2 X 299 31,760 **** 13,163
Total 4887 820,390 157,778
Per year 92 15,479 2977

Source: *catalog CFTI5Med Guidoboni et  al. (2019); **Web; ***specific study; ****Italian civil
protection. The last column reports the total cost, in Million € discounted to 2014, incurred by the Italian
government for the reconstruction and the emergency management. Data in italic are estimated from a
linear regression with the number of homeless

tion, and giving 407 victims/year.

13
 2458 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

9 Economic losses

The total direct economic losses may be computed based on loss parameters related to dam-
age repair and to the building surface reported in the inventory data. The cost parameters
are calibrated as the percentage cost of repair or replacement for each structural damage

Table 7  Victims relative to Year Epicentral area Io Mw Victims Source

35 destructive earthquakes
of the last 853 years with an
1169 Sicilia orientale X 6.4 15,000 *
intensity ≥ X degree of MCS
scale 1328 Norcia X 6.4 2000 *
1349 Lazio meridionale-Molise X 6.6 2500 *
1456 Molise XI 7.2 25,000 *
1461 Aquilano X 6.4 150 **
1542 Siracusano X 6.8 200 *
1561 Vallo di Diano X 6.8 584 ***
1627 Gargano X 6.7 5000 *
1638 Crotonese/Calabria X 6.9 30,000 *
1659 Calabria centrale X 6.6 2035 *
1688 Sannio XI 7.0 10,000 *
1693 Sicilia orientale XI 7.4 54,000 *
1694 Irpinia-Basilicata X 6.8 4820 *
1695 Asolano X 6.5 150 *
1702 Beneventano-Irpinia X 6.5 400 *
1703 Aquilano XI 6.7 9670 *
1706 Maiella X–XI 6.8 2400 *
1732 Irpinia X–XI 6.6 1940 *
1781 Appennino marchigiano X 6.4 300 *
1783 Calabria XI 6.6 35,170 *
1805 Molise X 6.6 5573 *
1832 Crotonese X 6.6 234 *
1851 Basilicata X 6.4 1000 *
1854 Cosentino X 6.2 500 *
1857 Basilicata XI 7.0 19,000 *
1908 Calabria-Messina XI 7.1 80,000 *
1915 Avezzano XI 7.0 33,000 *
1919 Mugello X 6.3 100 *
1920 Garfagnana X 6.5 171 *
1930 Irpinia X 6.6 1404 *
1968 Valle del Belice X 6.3 290 ***
1976 Friuli X 6.5 978 *
1980 Irpinia-Basilicata X 6.9 2735 *
2009 L’Aquila X 6.3 309 ****
2016 Amatrice X 6.2 299 ****
Total 346,912
Per year 407

Source: *catalogue CFTI5Med Guidoboni et  al. (2019); **Web;

***specific study; ****Italian civil protection

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2459

Fig. 12  a Number of victims relative to earthquakes of the last 853 years with an intensity ≥ X degree of
MCS scale. b Magnitude of 242 earthquakes with Mw ≥ 5.5 taken from CPTI11 catalog (Rovida et  al.
2011). The red line is a moving average calculated every 20 points

state and equal to 0.02, 0.1, 0.3, 0.6, 1, for DS1, DS2, DS3, DS4, and DS5, respectively,
with a unit cost of € 1350/m2 including technical expenses and VAT (Di Ludovico et al.
2017; Dolce et al. 2020). If the site amplification is not considered, the estimated cost/year
for repair/reconstruction of damaged buildings, is € 2.43 billion, similar to that provided
in the work of Dolce and co-workers summing up to € 2.13 billion/year. If site effects are
considered the cost increases up to € 7.3 billion/year, resulting higher but to a lesser extent
compared to victims and homeless. Figure 13 shows the mean annual expected economic
losses (Million €) over the national territory with and without considering the site amplifi-
cation effect.
Being absolute and not percentage values as in the previous maps, the effect of the pop-
ulation exposure becomes prevalent and the higher values correspond to the largest cities
as Naples, Rome, Palermo, Catania, Messina. To this end, Table 8 shows, for three Italian
cities, the effect of the exposure in terms of inhabitants and dwellings on the absolute val-
ues of economic losses and victims compared with hazard (probability of exceeding a PGA
of 0.2 g) and risk (risk index as defined in Sect. 10). Rome and Naples, even if affected by
a rather low hazard, have the highest values of economic losses and victims, both with and
without site amplification, because of their large exposure values. Campobasso, a small-
sized city (around 50,000 inhabitants) northeast of Naples, has a definitely higher hazard
and risk (columns 2 and 5 in Table 8) but a much lower number of victims and damages
expected per year.
Table 9 presents a comparison between the estimated losses obtained in this study with
those derived from historical surveyed data shown in Tables 6 and 7. The loss estimates
have been calculated also considering the epistemic uncertainties in the hazard curves:
50°, 16° and 84° percentiles (Stucchi et al. 2011; Meletti and Montaldo 2007). The values
including site amplification are higher due to the reasons discussed previously, whereas

13
 2460 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Fig. 13  Mean annual expected economic losses (Million €): a without site effects; b with site effects

Table 8  Effect of the exposure in terms of inhabitants and dwellings on the absolute values of economic
loss and victims compared with hazard (probability of exceeding a PGA of 0.2 g) and risk (risk index as
defined in paragraph 10) for three Italian cities, with and without site amplification (soil, rock)

City Probability exc. Inhabitants Dwellings Ranking by Loss/year Victims/year

0.2 g risk index (see million €
par.10)

Roma rock 8.00E−04 2,563,863 1,135,983 2181 153.5 16

Roma soil 3.70E−03 1063 645.4 133
Napoli rock 1.50E−03 955,158 347,470 661 83.8 23
Napoli soil 5.50E−03 449 244.7 102
Campobasso 3.20E−03 48,556 18,981 238 8.2 2
rock
Campobasso soil 1.25E−02 70 24.6 10

those without amplification are comparable, as order of magnitude, with the historical data.
In fact, considering the large uncertainties in the data used for risk assessments and even in
the historical ones, the real goal of any risk evaluation is the estimate of the order of mag-
nitude of the expected losses (in our case hundreds of victims, tens thousands of homeless
and some billion € per year). The loss estimates referring to rock site condition are also in
line with those of previous studies, both in terms of absolute values and territorial distribu-
tion (Lucantoni et al. 2001; Rota et al. 2011; Zanini et al. 2019; Dolce et al. 2020).

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2461

Table 9  Comparison of the loss values obtained in this study with those derived from historical surveyed
data, including the uncertainty in the seismic hazard
With site effects Without site effects Historical data
16° perc 84° perc 50° perc. 16° perc 84° perc 50° perc.
hazard hazard

Victims/year 1766 3634 2493 373 847 540 407

Homeless/year 128,061 240,454 176,910 34,536 70,482 48,921 15,192
Loss/year 5.75 10.66 7.87 1.67 3.35 2.34 2.97
billion €

10 Risk index for prevention planning

Although the absolute values of losses are affected by considerable uncertainties, the rela-
tive ranking of different sites and municipalities is still valid and it is particularly important
to have a clear perception of the seismic risk at the national scale and to rationally imple-
ment risk reduction programs (Zanini et al. 2019). To this end, in this study we introduce a
risk index calculated, for each municipality, by weighting by 2/3 the so-called life-risk (i.e.,
the annual percentage of homes suffering collapse) and by 1/3 the damage-risk (i.e. the
annual percentage of homes suffering damage):
PD PC
Risk index = 0.33 ⋅
PDmax
+ 0.67 ⋅
PCmax (4)

where PD is given, for each municipality, by the sum of the annual probability of damage
states DS2 and DS3 and ­PDmax is the maximum value among the 7715 municipalities con-
sidered. PC and ­PCmax have been calculated in the same way considering the probability of
damage states DS4 and DS5. In this way the risk index is normalized to 1. Figure 14 dis-
plays the ranking of the Italian municipalities sorted by the seismic risk index, highlight-
ing with different colors the first 100, 200 and 1000 municipalities that are concentrated
in Northeastern Alps, in Central Italy, in Calabria and in Eastern Sicily. It is worth noting
that the spatial distribution of the highest risk municipalities does not depend much on the
introduction of site amplification effects.
Table 10 shows the first ten municipalities sorted by seismic risk index and compared
with the corresponding ranking in terms of vulnerability and hazard. They are small vil-
lages with a population lower than 1000 inhabitants, as the majority of the first 100 munic-
ipalities except for Reggio di Calabria, Cosenza, Sulmona, and Campobasso (Table  11).
Densely populated cities such as Bologna, Napoli, Messina, Catania are instead included
in the first thousand municipalities sorted by risk index. The effect of the site amplifica-
tion is not relevant for the risk ranking (columns 4 and 5) as the maximum difference is
for the city of Caporciano, found in the seventh position in case of rock site conditions
and in the 23rd position in case of soil. The influence of vulnerability (represented in col-
umn 6 by the ranking in terms of percentage of dwellings belonging to class A) is higher
than that of hazard (column 7, ranking in terms of PGA). Seven out of the ten highest

13
 2462 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Fig. 14  Maps showing the first 100, 200 and 1000 municipalities sorted by risk index: a without site
effects; b with site effects

risk municipalities are in L’Aquila province, remembering that the 2011 ISTAT census did
not consider the reconstruction after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake that is still in progress.
Table 11 shows the largest cities, in terms of population, among the first 200 municipalities
with the highest seismic risk index.
In Table 12 are illustrated the costs of a hypothetical seismic retrofitting applied to
the first 100, 200 and 1000 municipalities sorted by risk index. The costs have been
estimated considering an amount of 600 €/m2 applied only to buildings of the three
highest vulnerability classes, namely A and B for masonry and C2 for reinforced con-
crete, representing about 70% of the total dwelling surface. As a result, about 4 billion
€ would be necessary to seismically retrofit the first 100 Italian municipalities at risk,
€ 20 billion for the first 200, and about 140 billion € for the first 1000 municipalities.
It is interesting to calculate the risk reduction that can be obtained adopting this kind
of intervention. For example, if the retrofit cost of 20 billion € (corresponding to about
7 years of the global expenditure normally granted by the Government for the recon-
struction) was applied to upgrade the 479,614 dwellings of the first 200 municipalities
at risk by one vulnerability class (A to B, B to C1, etc.) the achieved risk reduction, in
terms of expected values of homeless, victims and economic loss, would be of about
57%.

13
 Table 10  First 10 Italian municipalities sorted by seismic risk index including and not including site amplification effect
Province Municipality Population Ranking by risk index Ranking by risk index Ranking by vulnerability Ranking by hazard
(soil) (rock) (class A) (PGA 475 yrs. soil)

L’Aquila Anversa degli Abruzzi 367 1 3 98 207

L’Aquila Gagliano Aterno 255 2 2 27 240
L’Aquila Rocca Pia 167 3 4 40 204
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

L’Aquila Calascio 136 4 1 7 786

Udine Savogna 482 5 16 96 639
Isernia Carpinone 1161 6 12 64 244
Udine Pulfero 1025 7 23 63 245
L’Aquila Caporciano 223 8 25 208 165
Pordenone Frisanco 633 9 10 46 307
Rieti Micigliano 127 10 6 86 947
2463

13
 2464 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Table 11  First 8 Italian municipalities sorted by population among the 200 with the highest seismic risk
index
Province Municipality Population Ranking by risk PGA 475
index (soil) yrs (soil)

Catania Catania 291,804 152 0.370

Messina Messina 238,927 113 0.406
Reggio di Calabria Reggio di Calabria 179,748 88 0.458
Cosenza Cosenza 68,962 16 0.453
Bologna Imola 67,201 195 0.379
Campobasso Campobasso 48,556 70 0.431
L’Aquila Sulmona 23,986 15 0.420
Catania Sant’Agata li Battiati 9593 186 0.375

Table 12  Data relative to the first 100, 200 and 1000 municipalities sorted by risk index
Population Buildings Dwellings Surf. ­(m2) class Retrofitting
A, B, C2 cost billion
€

First 100 municipalities 404,601 103,392 164,335 1.21E+07 7.3

First 200 municipalities 1,172,567 261,879 479,614 3.38E+07 20.3
First 1000 municipalities 8,696,050 1,628,788 3,549,318 2.33E+08 139.8

The costs of seismic retrofitting are estimated considering an amount of 600 €/m2 applied to buildings of
the three highest vulnerability classes (A, B, C2—about 70% of the total)

11 Conclusions

In this study we propose a novel approach to assess the Italian seismic risk considering
the geo-lithological site amplification effect derived from numerical simulations based on
seismic microzonation data. The amplification factors were assigned to the chief town of
each of the 7715 Italian municipalities, assuming the building stock concentrated in that
small area. The PGA amplification ranges from 1 to 2.2, with an average value of 1.75,
with site effects retrieved from the recent papers by Falcone et al. (2021) and Mendicelli
et al. (2022). If the site amplification foreseen by the Italian building code is considered,
adopting the ­VS30 values from Mori et al. (2020), the increase in PGA is between 1 and 1.8,
with average value of 1.27. To validate the achieved results, a careful analysis of the his-
torical data relative to the major Italian earthquakes in terms of casualties, homeless, and
economic damage has been performed. If a rock site condition is considered for the entire
territory, the loss estimates are comparable with those of previous works and with the
historical data, both in terms of absolute values and in territorial distribution. The intro-
duction of the site amplification effects yields a significant increase in the expected losses
mainly because the adopted fragility curves use low PGA values taken from shakemaps
using a simplified approach to consider the site amplification. A seismic risk index has
been defined allowing a ranking of the Italian municipalities useful for the implementation
of prevention strategies and for the risk communication to different stakeholders both in
the private and public sector, such as governments, association of citizens, insurance and

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2465

reinsurance companies. The first thousand municipalities at risk, regardless of the introduc-
tion of the site amplification, are mainly concentrated in Central and Southern Italy and in
Northeastern Alps, roughly reflecting the hazard distribution, with significant differences
because of buildings’ vulnerability and exposure. Even if the absolute loss values may only
be considered in terms of order of magnitude, due to the large uncertainties in hazard vul-
nerability and exposure, the relative ranking of different sites and municipalities is essen-
tial to implement seismic risk reduction programs, comparing resulting benefits with costs
of seismic retrofitting schemes. It has been verified that, if the retrofitting cost correspond-
ing to about 7 years of the global expenditure normally granted by the Government for the
reconstruction was applied to move the dwellings of the first 200 municipalities at risk
by one vulnerability class, the achieved risk reduction would be of about 57%. This study
represents a first step in considering the new achievements in terms of site amplification
effects for the improvement of the seismic risk assessment in Italy. Future works need to:
(a) update the hazard, e.g. considering the results of the European map ESHM20 (Dan-
ciu et al. 2021); (b) revise the fragility curves introducing the new site effects and adopt-
ing, besides PGA, response spectral values as intensity measure; (c) include the aleatory
uncertainty of the amplification effects and fragility curves; (d) consider the asset location
and the uncertainty in the exposure model; (e) develop a complete logic tree taking into
account all the epistemic uncertainties,
Acknowledgements  The authors would like to thank Annalisa Rosti, Andrea Penna, Maria Rota and Gian-
marco De Felice for the fruitful discussions that definitely help to improve the quality of the paper. The
authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. Gabriele Fiorentino
has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program under the Marie Curie
Grant Agreement No. 892454 (https://​cordis.​europa.​eu/​proje​ct/​id/​892454/​it).

Funding  European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program under the Marie Curie Grant Agreement No.
892454 (https://​cordis.​europa.​eu/​proje​ct/​id/​892454/​it).

Declarations 
Conflict of interest  The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Open Access  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which
permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give
appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence,
and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the
article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is
not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory
regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright
holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://​creat​iveco​mmons.​org/​licen​ses/​by/4.​0/.

References
Albarello D, Bosi V, Bramerini F, Lucantoni A, Naso G, Peruzza L, Rebez A, Sabetta F, Slejko D (2000)
Carte di pericolosità sismica del territorio nazionale, Quaderni di geofisica, 12 (in Italian)
Amanti M et al (2008) The Lithological map of Italy at 1: 100.000 scale: an example of re-use of an existing
paper geological map. In: 33rd International geological conference, IEI02310L-6-14th August, Oslo
(Norway)
Asprone D, Jalayer F, Simonelli S, Acconcia A, Prota A, Manfredi G (2013) Seismic insurance model for
the Italian residential building stock. Struct Saf 44:70–79

13
 2466 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Bazzurro P, Cornell CA (2004) Nonlinear soil-site effects in probabilistic seismic-hazard analysis. Bull
Seismol Soc Am 94(6):2110–2123. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1785/​01200​30216
Bindi D, Massa M, Luzi L, Ameri G, Pacor F, Puglia R, Augliera P (2014) Pan-European ground-motion
prediction equations for the average horizontal component of PGA, PGV, and 5%-damped PSA at
spectral periods up to 3.0 s using the RESORCE dataset. Bull Earthq Eng 12(1):391–430
Borzi B, Crowley H, Pinho R (2008) Simplified pushover-based earthquake loss assessment (SP-BELA)
method for masonry buildings. Int J Arch Herit 2(4):353–376
Borzi B, Faravelli M, Di Meo A (2020) Application of the SP-BELA methodology to RC residential build-
ings in Italy to produce seismic risk maps for the national risk assessment. Bull Earthq Eng. https://​doi.​
org/​10.​1007/​s10518-​020-​00953-6
Borzi B, Onida M, Faravelli M, Polli D, Pagano M, Quaroni D et al (2021) IRMA platform for the calculation
of damages and risks of Italian residential buildings. Bull Earthq Eng 19(8):3033–3055
Bramerini F, Di Pasquale G (2008) Updated seismic risk maps for Italy. Ing Sismica XXV 2:5–23 (in Italian)
Camera dei deputati (2009) I principali eventi sismici a partire dal 1968. http://​docum​enti.​camera.​it/​leg16/​dossi​
er/​Testi/​Am0065.​htm
Cornell CA (1968) Engineering seismic risk analysis. Bull Seismol Soc AM 58:1583–1606
Crowley H, Colombi M, Borzi B, Faravelli M, Onida M, Lopez M, Polli D, Meroni F, Pinho R (2009) A com-
parison of seismic risk maps for Italy. Bull Earthq Eng 7(1):149–180
da Porto F, Donà M, Rosti A, Rota M, Lagomarsino S, Cattari S et al (2021) Comparative analysis of the fragil-
ity curves for Italian residential masonry and RC buildings. Bull Earthq Eng 19(8):3209–3252
Danciu L, Nandan S, Reyes C, Basili R, Weatherill G, Beauval C, Rovida A, Vilanova S, Sesetyan K, Bard
P-Y,Cotton F, Wiemer S, Giardini D (2021) The 2020 update of the European seismic hazard model:
model overview. In: EFEHR Technical Report 001, v1.0.0. https://​doi.​org/​10.​12686/​a15
Del Gaudio C, Di Ludovico M, Polese M, Manfredi G, Prota A, Ricci P, Verderame GM (2020) Seismic fragil-
ity for Italian RC buildings based on damage data of the last 50 years. Bull Earthq Eng 18(5):2023–2059
Di Ludovico M, Prota A, Moroni C, Manfredi G, Dolce M (2017) Reconstruction process of damaged residen-
tial buildings outside historical centres after the L’Aquila earthquake: part I “light damage” reconstruction,
part II: “heavy damage” reconstruction. Bull Earthq Eng 15(2):667–729
Di Pasquale GD, Orsini G, Romeo RW (2005) New developments in seismic risk assessment in Italy. Bull
Earthq Eng 3(1):101–128
Dolce M, Speranza E, Giordano F, Borzi B, Bocchi F, Conte C, Di Meo A, Faravelli M, Pascale V (2019)
Observed damage database of past italian earthquakes: the Da.D.O. WebGIS. Bollettino di Geofisica Teor-
ica e Applicata 60(2):141–164
Dolce M, Prota A, Borzi B, Da Porto F, Lagomarsino S, Magenes G, Moroni C, Penna A, Polese M, Speranza
E, Verderame GM, Zuccaro G (2020) Seismic risk assessment of residential buildings in Italy. Bull Earthq
Eng 19:2999–3032
Donà M, Carpanese P, Follador V, Sbrogiò L, da Porto F (2021) Mechanics-based fragility curves for Italian
residential URM buildings. Bull Earthq Eng 19(8):3099–3127
DPC (2018) Dipartimento della Protezione Civile, Commissione tecnica per il supporto e il monitoraggio degli
studi di Microzonazione Sismica (ex art.5, OPCM3907/10). www.​webms.​it
Falcone G, Acunzo G, Mendicelli A, Mori F, Naso G, Peronace E, Porchia A, Romagnoli G, Tarquini E, Mosc-
atelli M (2021) Seismic amplification maps of Italy based on site-specific microzonation dataset and one-
dimensional numerical approach. Eng Geol 289:1–25. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1016/j.​enggeo.​2021.​106170
GEM (2019) Italy Risk Profile, downloadable at https://​downl​oads.​openq​uake.​org/​count​rypro​files/​ITA.​pdf
GNDT-ING-SSN (1996) Risultati dell’analisi di rischio sismico per tutta la nazione riferita al patrimonio abita-
tivo. Elaborazioni basate sui dati ISTAT 1991. Roma (in Italian)
Goda K, Wenzel F, Daniell J (2014) Insurance and reinsurance models for earthquake. In: Encyclopedia of
earthquake engineering. Springer, Berlin, pp 1–24
Grünthal G (1998) European Macroseismic Scale 1998 (EMS-98). Center Europèen de Géodynamique et de
Séismologie, Luxembourg
Guidoboni E, Ferrari G, Tarabusi G, Sgattoni G, Comastri A, Mariotti D, Ciuccarelli C, Bianchi MG, Valensise
G (2019) CFTI5Med, the new release of the catalogue of strong earthquakes in Italy and in the Mediter-
ranean area. Sci Data 6:Article number: 80. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1038/​s41597-​019-​0091-9
ISTAT (National Institute of Statistics) (2001) 14° Censimento generale della popolazione e delle abitazioni,
released by ISTAT on December 9, 2004, download from dawinci.istat.it (in Italian)
ISTAT (National Institute of Statistics) (2011) 15° Censimento generale della popolazione, https://​www.​istat.​
it/​it/​censi​menti-​perma​nenti/​censi​menti-​prece​denti/​popol​azione-​e-​abita​zioni/​popol​azione-​2011 (in Italian)
Italian Civil Protection Department (2018) National Risk Assessment 2018. Overview of the potential major
disasters in Italy. Updated December 2018

13
Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468 2467

Iwahashi J, Kamiya I, Matsuoka M, Yamazaki D (2018) Global terrain classification using 280 m DEMs: seg-
mentation, clustering, and reclassification. Prog Earth Planet Sci 5(1):1–31
Lagomarsino S, Cattari S, Ottonelli D (2021) The heuristic vulnerability model: fragility curves for masonry
buildings. Bull Earthq Eng 19(8):3129–3163
Lucantoni A, Bosi V, Bramerini F, De Marco R, Lo PT, Naso G, Sabetta F (2001) Seismic risk in Italy. Ing
Sismica XVI I 1:5–36 (in Italian)
Meletti C, Montaldo V (2007) Stime di pericolosità sismica per diverse probabilità di superamento in 50 anni:
valori di ag. Progetto DPC-INGV S1, Deliverable D2. http://​esse1.​mi.​ingv.​it/​d2.​html
Mendicelli A, Falcone G, Acunzo G, Mori F, Naso G, Peronace E, Porchia A, Romagnoli G, Tarquini E, Mosc-
atelli M (2022) Italian seismic amplification factors for peak ground acceleration and peak ground veloc-
ity. J Maps 66:1–11. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1080/​17445​647.​2022.​21019​47
Michelini A, Faenza L, Lauciani V, Malagnini L (2008) ShakeMap implementation in Italy. Seismol Res Lett
79(5):688–697
Mori F, Mendicelli A, Moscatelli M, Romagnoli G, Peronace E, Naso G (2020) A new VS30 map for Italy
based on the seismic microzonatio dataset. Eng Geol 275:1–10. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1016/j.​enggeo.​2020.​
105745
NTC (2018) Norme Tecniche per le Costruzioni. Decreto Ministero Infrastrutture. GU Serie Generale n.42 del
20-02-2018—Suppl. (Ordinario n. 8)
Romagnoli G, Tarquini E, Porchia A, Catalano S, Albarello D, Moscatelli M (2022) Constraints for the Vs pro-
files from engineering-geological qualitative characterization of shallow subsoil in seismic microzonation
studies. Soil Dyn Earthq Eng 161:107–347. https://​doi.​org/​10.​1016/J.​SOILD​YN.​2022.​107347
Rosti A, Rota M, Penna A (2020a) Empirical fragility curves for Italian URM buildings. Bull Earthq Eng
19(8):3057–3076
Rosti A, Del Gaudio C, Rota M, Ricci P, Di Ludovico M, Penna A, Verderame GM (2020b) Empirical fragility
curves for Italian residential RC buildings. Bull Earthq Eng 19(8):3165–3183
Rota M, Penna A, Strobbia C, Magenes G (2011) Typological seismic risk maps for Italy. Earthq Spectra
27(3):907–926
Rovida A, Camassi R, Gasperini P, Stucchi M (2011) Catalogo Parametrico dei Terremoti Italiani (CPTI11).
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Milano, Bologna. https://​doi.​org/​10.​6092/​INGV.​
IT-​CPTI11
Sabetta F (2021) La pericolosità sismica in Italia: stato dell’arte. Geologia dell’Ambiente, Supplemento al N.
3/2021, Anno XXIX, pp 47–57 (in Italian)
Sabetta F, Goretti A, Lucantoni A (1998) Empirical fragility curves from damage surveys and estimated strong
ground motion. In: Proceedings of the 11th European conference on earthquake engineering, Paris,
France, pp 1–11
Senato della Repubblica (2017) Terremoti; L’Aquila, Reggio-Emilia, Centro Italia: politiche e risorse per ricos-
truire il Paese. https://​www.​senato.​it/​appli​cation/​xmana​ger/​proje​cts/​leg17/​attac​hments/​docum​ento/​files/​
000/​028/​605/​Dossi​er_​Terre​moti.​pdf
Silva V, Amo-Oduro D, Calderon A, Costa C, Dabbeek J, Despotaki V, Pittore M (2020) Development of a
global seismic risk model. Earthq Spectra 36(1 suppl):372–394
Stucchi M, Akinci A, Faccioli E, Gasperini P, Malagnini L, Meletti C, Montaldo V, Valensise G (2004) Mappa
di Pericolosità sismica del territorio Nazionale http://​zones​ismic​he.​mi.​ingv.​it/​docum​enti/​rappo​rto_​concl​
usivo.​pdf (in Italian)
Stucchi M, Meletti C, Montaldo V, Crowley H, Calvi GM, Boschi E (2011) Seismic hazard assessment (2003–
2009) for the Italian building code. Bull Seism Soc Am 101:1885–1911
Valensise G, Tarabusi G, Guidoboni E, Ferrari G (2017) The forgotten vulnerability: a geology-and history-
based approach for ranking the seismic risk of earthquake-prone communities of the Italian Apennines. Int
J Disast Risk Reduc 25:289–300
Wald DJ, Allen TI (2007) Topographic slope as a proxy for seismic site conditions and amplification. Bull
Seism Soc Am 97(5):1379–1395
Zanini MA, Hofer L, Pellegrino C (2019) A framework for assessing the seismic risk map of Italy and develop-
ing a sustainable risk reduction program. Int J Disast Risk Red 33:74–93
Zuccaro G (2004) Inventory and vulnerability of the residential building stock at a national level, seismic risk
and social/economic loss maps. SAVE, CD-ROM, Naples, Italy, INGV/GNDT-Project (in Italian)
Zuccaro G, Cacace F (2011) Seismic casualty evaluation: the Italian model, an application to the L’Aquila 2009
event. In: Spence R, So E, Scawthorn C (eds) Human casualties in earthquakes. Springer, Netherlands, pp
171–184
Zuccaro G, Perelli FL, De Gregorio D, Cacace F (2021) Empirical vulnerability curves for Italian masonry
buildings: evolution of vulnerability model from the DPM to curves as a function of accelertion. Bull
Earthq Eng 19(8):3077–3097

13
 2468 Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering (2023) 21:2441–2468

Zucconi M, Romano F, Ferracuti B (2022a) Typological fragility curves for RC buildings: influence of damage
index and building sample selection. Eng Struct 266:114627
Zucconi M, Di Ludovico M, Sorrentino L (2022) Census-based typological usability fragility curves for Italian
unreinforced masonry buildings. Bull Earthq Eng 66:1–20

Publisher’s Note  Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Authors and Affiliations

Fabio Sabetta1   · Gabriele Fiorentino2   · Flavio Bocchi3 · Martina Sinibaldi1 ·

Gaetano Falcone4,5   · Amerigo Mendicelli4 
1
Department of Engineering, Roma Tre University, Rome, Italy
2
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
3
Pizzi Instruments, Via del Fornaccio 46, 50012 Bagno a Ripoli, FI, Italy
4
CNR-IGAG, Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria, 00015 Montelibretti, Rome, Italy
5
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Ambientale, del Territorio, Edile e di Chimica, Politecnico di
Bari, Bari, Italy

13