Towards a dignity in housing: policies and tools for the seismic risk prevention

Following the seismic event which struck severely L'Aquila, in 2009 the Italian government launched a national plan for the seismic risk prevention, in order to finance actions of seismic reinforcement, improvement and adaptation of all buildings, public and private, and of strategic infrastructural works. At the same time, general objectives and criteria for effective preventive action to be implemented with these funds have been defined. Seismic risk mitigation is one of the main and most ambitious goals, which is also carried out through seismic microzonation studies, that is to say territorial analysis to assess the local hazard of an earthquake. Seismic microzonation allows National Service and the Department of Civil Protection to deal with seismic risk mitigation in the location and to provide guide lines due to a prevision, prevention, assistance and post - emergency way. Prevention emergency plans are focused on emergency limit condition (CLE) in order to ensure the minimal function of an urban site to manage the emergency itself. The paper presents the seismic risk analysis and the hazard evaluation related to earthquakes near Peschici’s municipality, a little town located on the Gargano’s promontory, which is featured by moderate seismicity, with fairly frequent events, but mostly of medium energy. The interest focuses on seismic microzonation cause of earthquake’s local effect results in the survey site. By comparing the emergency plans of some of the municipalities in the Gargano region, such as Ischitella, Vico del Gargano and Peschici, the paper aims to relate actors and tools that at various levels are involved in seismic risk prevention. The difficulties which can be encountered are due to a non-perfect synergy between civil protection plans and urban plans or to an incorrect on-site detection of elements for analysis. The selection of strategic buildings and emergency areas may need to be investigated carefully, because it is not only important the number of selectable areas, but, above all, their functionality and accessibility compared to the neighboring urban and territorial settlements. An improvement in the criteria for the selection of CLE facilities would be ensured by more specific technical standards, which would steer the technician to the most appropriate choice, and outlined frequent monitoring tests of the structure for the minimum design reliability requirement at CLE