The Catania Project: earthquake damage scenarios for a high risk area in the Mediterranean

Abstract

We summarise the features of the «Catania project», a comprehensive earthquake damage scenario study on the city of Catania (Southern Italy), hit by two M7+ earthquakes, and by some damaging ones, in one thousand years. Discussed first is the construction, via GIS, of deterministic ground motion maps for the main scenario event, incorporating a reliable geotechnical zonation map based on near-surface S-wave velocities. The characteristics of typical local buildings, and the assemblage of a general building inventory for the wholecity are described next, followed by the two methods adopted for assessing seismic vulnerabilty and estimating building damage: a statistical approach based on a vulnerability score assignment, and a more physical approach based on displacement limit states. Damage scenario maps to residential buildings obtained by the two methods are illustrated and discussed