Evacuation paths in historic city centres: A holistic methodology for assessing their seismic risk

Managing Natural Disasters in Historic Areas: a Novel Holistic Seismic Risk Assessment Method Applied to a Relevant Case Study

“…Risks that influence the availability of an urban paths network in emergency condition have to be inquired. The adopted methodology [7] in this work could be defined as semeiotic, for its rapid application thanks to easy to detect data about the built environment, and holistic because it jointly combine several aspects that have different influence on paths safety. Thanks to a series of alternatives differently weighted related to a list of parameters the method is able to quantify numerically (0-100%) the seismic risk of each element (introduced in Section 2.1) composing the urban layout.…”

“…The methodology [7] application highlights from one side, a certain homogeneity in the outcoming risk indexes due to the similar features of inquired links but, from the other side, the complex situation of the Sulmona's historic centre especially for those streets that could be considered as the main connections for the central square of the city. In Figure 3 different colours are associated to four risk levels individuated between the maximum and minimum risk index by dividing into equal parts this interval and rounding the obtained indexes reported in Table 1 for each inquired links and squares.…”

“…: without particular events that gather a large mass of people) is able to host a large number of evacuating inhabitants, thus it can be reached by rescuers through the link 14-15 only if no obstruction deriving from the buildings collapse would impede the passage of vehicles (Rescue Scenario). Sulmona's main streets according to the adopted method [7].…”

“…The present work takes advantage of the application of the seismic risk assessment method developed by [7] to a significant case study Sulmona (Italy) representative of the central regions of Italy frequently exposed to earthquakes. The work aim is to indicate ad hoc emergency solutions measured on the inquired scenarios for the studied historic centre starting from specific indication provided by the employed method.…”

Capacitated Refuge Assignment for Speedy and Reliable Evacuation

“…In case of evacuation guiding, the simple shortest path may not be enough for the speedy and safety evacuation. Several studies focused on various metrics for the speedy and reliable path selection: traffic congestion [28,29], obstructions related to the presence of debris [30,31], and road vulnerability [13,15,17,32,33]. From the viewpoint of the evacuation speediness, the selfish behavior of evacuees (i.e., trying to move to their refuges as speedy as possible) may cause heavy congestion.…”