Combining social vulnerability and seismic hazard to produce integrated risk scenarios

The last ten years, studies about social vulnerability against natural hazards have generated a large literature, highlighting that the multidisciplinary approach of this field has been widely and strongly adopted within several researchers with different backgrounds (Geologist, geographer, anthropologist, etc.). One of the reasons could be the overall increase of the need for the policymakers, stakeholders and researchers to have more information about the comprehension of the different aspects of vulnerability in order to adopt priority actions and guidelines for the improvement of risk governance. With this abstract we propose a multidisciplinary framework to assess the spatial relationship between seismic hazard and social vulnerability in order to identify “risk scenarios” that can be used by planners and decision-makers as tool for risk mitigation strategies. This include both physical (earthquake hazard) and human (social vulnerability) dimension in the context of disaster risk reduction. There are several different approaches for risk assessment and the method designed for this study is based on the concept of "scenario". A scenario-based approach is particularly well-suited for the evaluation of the earthquake hazard by considering the expected ground motions and effects of specific hypothetical large earthquakes, and estimating the social vulnerability of people expected to be involved. The probability of a natural disaster having more devastating effects in one place than in another depends on the local vulnerability of the affected society, intended as a cultural, social and economic organization. Therefore, there is an important correlation between the potential risk and the social resistance and resilience of a specific place, thus the disaster response varies according to the social fabric. In this context, the main purpose of this work is to assess social vulnerability index (SVI) toward earthquake hazard for Italy in order to identify risk scenarios: zones with high seismic levels and at the same time high social vulnerability levels. To date, there is a strong inhomogeneous about the geographic context of social vulnerability studies. The majority coming from US countries, where this concept is more well-established and integrated in the risk assessment cycle rather than European Countries (especially Italy). Some of these having addressed the issue for a various time period while others are only now beginning to consider such issues, especially regarding social vulnerability and floods hazard or earthquake hazard. Considering the concept of risk governance, the results of this study should interact to share knowledge and strategies on risk management, suggesting the importance of the integration social vulnerability studies into seismic risk mitigation strategies and policies, emergency management and territorial planning to reduce the impact of disasters