The Role of Urban Configuration in the Pre-Emergency and Post-Emergency Seismic Management Phase

Italy’s high seismic activity poses significant challenges for its rich cultural heritage of historic religious buildings, which are often constructed with traditional techniques that offer limited seismic resistance and are rarely retrofitted. These structures have historically demonstrated high vulnerability to seismic events. Conventional structural engineering methods typically focus on a building’s capacity to withstand seismic actions, but such methods often overlook critical factors like evacuation and rescue operations. A comprehensive definition of vulnerability considers physical, social, economic, and environmental aspects, emphasising the importance of road-infrastructure resilience. This study proposes a novel risk matrix for the seismic evaluation of historical religious buildings, integrating hazard intensity with asset susceptibility. Asset susceptibility is defined by three factors: exposure, territorial exposure, and physical susceptibility. By applying this matrix to thirty-seven churches in the Tuscany region, the present study wants to highlight the role of road-network resilience when analysing the overall susceptibility of historical buildings to seismic hazards.