Layman's Report of the European Project UPStrat-MAFA

Co-financed by the EU - Civil Protection Financial Instrument - GRANT AGREEMENT n. 230301/2011/613486/SUB/A5

Earthquakes have been the cause of the deadliest natural
disasters over the past century, with the first decade of the 21st
century as one of the most devastating periods. Due to the high
number of factors that contribute to earthquake occurrence, their
prediction is extremely difficult. At the moment, large efforts are
being lavished by the international community in scientific and
economic terms, in studies for the probabilistic short-term and
long-term earthquake forecasting and for simulation aspects of
the generation process in order to reduce the risk and to mitigate
the damage and its impact.
The project aims at the implementation of innovative prevention
approaches to consistently link prevention measures to
preparedness and response needs. To support the decisionmaking,
several projects have already been developed, like
seismic scenario simulators, vulnerability assessment of
buildings, non-structural components, critical assets, lifeline
(critical) infrastructures, and others.
Despite these many efforts, neither functional interdependencies
(propagation effects) nor intervention strategies or priorities have
been incorporated as final tools in the support of decisions for riskreduction
policies. In this project, tools that are specifically
devoted to the identification of priorities have been delivered. First,
a new concept of global disruption measures is introduced, with
the objective to provide a systematic way to measure earthquake
impact in urban areas.
Then, a framework is provided where urbanized areas are seen as
a complex network where nodal points have roles as sources and
sinks, interacting together in an interdependent fashion. Here,
each player (urban functions and physical assets) has its unique
dependencies and interaction behavior. These properties are then
used to identify which nodes are likely to introduce major
disruption in the whole urban system, and also which one of them
suggests greater risk reduction if intervention takes place.