Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Strutturale

Prior to 2003 the Italian building code, established in 1974, was mostly based on working stress design. The zonation that guided its application was made up in 1981 using a semi-quantitative, mainly seismological approach; it was enforced in 1984 and left about 2/3 of the territory without seismic provisions. In 1998 a new zonation was proposed but never adopted. The 2002 Mw5.7 earthquake in Molise (Southern Italy) caused the collapse of a school and the death of 26 children. The school was built in an area where seismic provisions were not applied, although the zonation proposed in 1998 assigned it to the second zone. The earthquake triggered a process that led in a few months to a new set of seismic provisions