Role of urban interactions and damage in seismic resilience of historical centers

Abstract

Historical centers are places where local identity principles and contemporary dynamics of urbanization coexist. They conserve cultural heritage, hence the presence of many historical assets makes these places highly vulnerable and exposed. Accordingly, historical centers need to be managed in order to guarantee proper resilience levels. This is paramount in light of the increasing rate of occurrence of adverse natural and man-made events, above all earthquakes. This study proposes a methodology, that enables to model any urban environment as a complex network. Different urban components and their interrelations can be considered, and rigorous mathematical measures can be performed. These measures quantify the efficiency of urban functioning. Reiterating such measures before and after an event occurrence, and in each stage of the recovery of an urban context, enables to compute a unique resilience indices. The real case study of the inner city Naples is proposed to show the methodology. Results are discussed with regards to seismic scenario analysis for different intensity levels. Hence, the trend of the resilience indices against the event magnitude is observed, in case different recovery strategy are simulated.