Ischia Island: a model for a sustainable development and natural risk mitigation

Abstract

The island of Ischia has a land area of 46.3 square kilometers and a population of 64.115 inhabitants by 2019. The territorial density is 1,385 inhabitants per square kilometer. The environmental sustainability of Ischia is about 22 thousand inhabitants. In the year 2017 there were about 2.3 million tourists. The remarkable expansion of historical settlements on the Island in recent decades, without adequate planning that would pay attention to the geological hazard, has produced an exponential increase in risk, as it was shown by the disastrous earthquake that occurred in Casamicciola on 21 August 2017. The underestimation of volcanic, seismic and hydrogeological risks on the Island is incomprehensible due to the catastrophes that occurred with the historic eruption of 1302, the strong earthquakes of 1881 and 1883 and the disastrous flood of 1910.