A web GIS for managing post-earthquake emergencies

Abstract

This paper describes the results achieved within the framework of the national research project Reduction of the Seismic Vulnerability of Infrastructural Systems and Physical Environment, sponsored by the GNDT (Italian National Group for Defense Against Earthquakes), which is a body of the INGV (Italian Geophysic and Volcanology National Institute). The project, which involved several Universities around Italy under the coordination of Prof. Michele Calvi of the University of Pavia, was carried out over three years and has been just completed in July 2004. The aim of the project was to study the problems related to the seismic vulnerability assessment both of the physical environment and the infrastructural systems, to develop new techniques and tools, or improve the existing ones, to provide an efficient reduction of the risk. One of the products of the project is the Web GIS, described in this paper, which has been applied to a test area in the South of Italy which in the past has suffered high seismic level events, to prove its efficiency and to examine the possibility of its implementation at national level. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.