GNGTS 2023 - Atti del 41° Convegno Nazionale

Session 2.2 GNGTS 2023 Integrating physical and social vulnerabilities in decision-making for disaster risk reduction G. Tocchi 1 , G. Cremen 2 , C. Galasso 2,3 , M. Polese 1 1 University of Naples Federico II, Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture, Naples, Italy 2 Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London, London, UK 3 Scuola Universitaria Superiore (IUSS) Pavia, Pavia, Italy Introduction The large numbers of casualties and significant economic losses caused by past natural-hazard-related disasters emphasise the importance of designing and implementing suitable risk-reduction strategies to mitigate such impacts in the future. A crucial step in this process is modelling and quantifying natural-hazard risk, which enables decision-makers to understand the potential types and extent of future disaster impacts. Progress has been achieved in reducing disaster risk at local, national, regional and global levels. Still, evidence indicates that impacts of hazards are not equally distributed within society (e.g., UNIDRR, 2015). Social vulnerability factors (e.g., age, gender, origin, educational level, employment and income) may affect response capacities to hazards. Given its complex multidimensional nature, risk assessment for effective disaster-risk management and decision-making should consider both physical and social vulnerability factors. However, this is currently inhibited by conventional natural hazard risk assessments, which typically fail to account for diverse socioeconomic and demographic risk drivers. This study addresses this challenge in the context of earthquake risk, proposing a series of tools for supporting decision-making on disaster risk reduction that integrate crucial physical and social vulnerability factors. Risk Index First, we develop a Risk Index (RI) for identifying areas that should be prioritised for disaster-risk-reduction policy implementation. The proposed RI integrates individual indicators for hazard and both physical and social exposure and vulnerability. The RI is calculated by normalising, weighting and aggregating individual indicators per conventional approaches to design such indices (e.g., OECD, 2008). We evaluate the RI for the Campania region of Italy using a municipality-level scale of analysis. The considered seismic hazard indicator is derived from a measure of earthquake-induced ground shaking at the municipal centroid, which is quantified according to a selected hazard map. In this specific case, we adopt the official reference in the country for seismic hazard values, i.e., the map