Forensic Investigations of Geohazards: The Norcia 2016 Earthquake

Abstract

Earthquakes represent one of the world's most significant hazards in terms of damage to human and animal life, and property. Earthquakes also cause many other related fatalities and damage to urban structures. This paper presents the forensic investigation of failures induced by the Norcia 2016 earthquake in Italy. The detailed geophysical field investigations were carried out at selected locations in two cities: Rome and Amelia. The places of investigation were 150 km and 90 km, respectively, from the epicenter. A ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey was carried out at the sites to highlight structural failures, and included a partially damaged urban bridge, and the cracked wall of a private house. These failures have been discussed with reference to the field measurements carried out. In both cases, the GPR radargram showed clear lesions along with their geometry and location. This forensic geoscientific analysis highlights the importance of detecting structural damage immediately after a geohazard event to help plan proper interventions, efforts to prevent human losses and help law enforcement to focus their forensic investigations.

Forensic Profiling Analogue Approach for the Investigation of Natural Hazards – A Case Study from Onokoba Elementary School, Unzen Volcano, Japan

“…A new term and research field, forensic geohazard was born from the overlapping field of Earth and forensic science during the study of natural hazards, "when the geological risk is intertwined with forensic investigation" (Barone and Di Maggio, 2018;p. 1).…”

“…1). In disaster hit areas forensic geohazard studies may play significant role e.g., in the search for missing persons (e.g., the so-called Rescue Radar) and also in the study of possible damage in the built environment (structures and buildings) and preventing further disasters (Barone and Di Maggio, 2018).…”

Sequential Earthquake Damage Assessment Incorporating Optimized sUAV Remote Sensing at Pescara del Tronto

“…The October events caused significant damage primarily in the villages of Visso, Ussita, and Norcia [2,6], and exacerbated the damage in Pescara del Tronto. Other analyses of the 2016 earthquake sequence include geohazard forensics of Norcia in Barone and Di Maggio [9] as well as numerical modeling of ground deformation in Valerio et al [10], the mechanisms of the earthquakes in Zhong et al [11], and Amatrice building damage assessment using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) in Karimzadeh and Matsuoka [12]. The earthquake events appear in a gap between two recent M6.1 events-the 1997 Umbria-Marche earthquake to the north-west and the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake to the south-east.…”

Forensic geophysics: ground penetrating radar (GPR) techniques and missing persons investigations

“…Ground penetrating radar (GPR) research is commonly used in crime scene investigations (CSI) worldwide owing to its rapid, precise and nondestructive technique (NDT) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. These advantageous characteristics make GPR an efficient and extensively used method to find missing people in different environments [8][9][10][11][12][13]. In Italy, only 65% of missing people are found after several searches [14].…”