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Sustainability and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities in Seismic Risk Prevention, Mitigation and Adaptation

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Hazards and Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2023) | Viewed by 12139

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Vittorio Rosato

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Guest Editor

ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Casaccia Research Centre, 00123 Roma, Italy
Interests: critical infrastructure protection; complexity science; risk analysis; electrical network; decision support system; GIS; optimization, simulation models

Dr. Maurizio Pollino

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Co-Guest Editor

ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Casaccia Research Centre, 00123 Rome, Italy
Interests: geomatics applications; land planning; spatial analysis; risk analysis; multi-risk assessment; GIS-based; decision support systems (DSS)
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Sonia Giovinazzi

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Co-Guest Editor

ENEA National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, 00196 Rome, Italy
Interests: models for assessing and monitoring the resilience of the built environment to natural hazards and climate change; models for assessing the vulnerability of buildings, distributed infrastructure, historic areas and cultural heritage to natural hazards and extreme events
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Paolo Clemente

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Co-Guest Editor

Casaccia Research Centre, ENEA—Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Via Anguillarese 301, 00123 Rome, Italy
Interests: dynamic experimental analysis of structures; structural identification; development and application of modern anti-seismic technologies; suspended bridges; cable-stayed bridges; masonry arch bridges; seismic protection of structures of historical and artistic interest
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The challenge of humanity against the forces of nature is a longstanding issue. A remarkable research activity has been carried out towards the analysis and the prevention of seismic risk. However, nowadays complex and highly organised societies, where human, social political and environmental dimensions are strongly interconnected and constantly evolving, pose new fascinating challenges for research and development. The target in seismic risk prevention is no longer focussing only on safeguarding human life, but also in guaranteeing undamaged or low-damaged infrastructures and buildings, to preserve their contents and service functionality, and in empowering communities to become resilient by promoting their awareness and capacities. This in the aim of continuing living and working in the aftermath of a severe seismic event, and guaranteeing a resilient recovery after a catastrophic event by resuming timely pre-disaster conditions and/or by promoting an improved new-normal, where changes imposed by the disaster are turned into opportunities for positive changes. All these aims must be pursued in a sustainable way, i.e. trying to meet current needs without compromising future generations, taking out mortgages that they would not be able to pay off. In this perspective, just to provide some examples: sustainable urban planning for risk mitigation should be promoted; the conservation of cultural heritage buildings that do not satisfy current safety requirements should be considered and pursued by changing, for example, their current use, so that their possible earthquake induced damage do not pose a risk to human lives and to the functionality of essential services; the preservation of Intangible aspects and values of the society should be accounted for and effort etc.

The “Sustainability” Special Issue aims therefore to collect contributions on innovative approaches and methods for a resilient and sustainable prevention, mitigation and adaptation of seismic risk.

Topics covered by the special issue, encompass among others, the following topics:

(a) seismic hazard assessment from the geophysical, seismological and geotechnical viewpoint, welcoming contributions from scientists of the physical community and contribution on ground and remote monitoring technologies targeting the seismic microzoning and the characterisation of local seismic response;

(b) seismic vulnerability assessment of the existing built environment targeting both buildings and structures, with particular focus on strategic and critical infrastructures;

(d) sustainable and energy efficient technologies for seismic retrofitting of existing structures and infrastructures;

(e) Structural Health Monitoring innovative sensors and approaches for data processing;

(f) Societal vulnerability assessment;

(g) innovative approaches for promoting education, awareness and capacity building in communities;

(h) innovative frameworks, strategies and tools to support an effective and timely emergency management, and a resilient response and recovery;

(i) best practices and lesson learnt (including evidences on what went wrong and can therefore be improved) after recent catastrophic events;

(j) Seismic risk mitigation policies and risk-based insurance.

The Special Issue will be promoted by triggering the attention of renowned scientists in different domains who will be called to contribute.

The Special Issue will be structured into three different Sections, each devoted to a specific domain which the issue topic compels to consider.

Part 1: Geological and geophysical aspects

In the first Section, we will call for contributions dealing with the current understandings of geo-seismic phenomena, their monitoring and the environmental assessments needed to gather thorough land knowledge useful for supporting safer and more resilient infrastructures.

Part 2: Structural aspects (infrastructure, strategic structures, …)

The second Section will focus on technical aspects for building resilient infrastructures in the different domains (residential and industrial buildings, transport infrastructures etc.)

Part 3: Prevention, risk analysis a disaster management

The third Section will host contributions on prevention, prediction and disaster management, as relevant components of the Emergency Management cycle.

Dr. Vittorio Rosato
Dr. Maurizio Pollino
Dr. Sonia Giovinazzi
Prof. Dr. Paolo Clemente
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

resilience
sustainability
mitigation
adaptation
prevention
awareness
capacity building
smart decision making processes
key performance indicators
low-damage design Seismic hazard
seismic vulnerability
social vulnerability
seismic structural health monitoring
experimental analysis of seismic response

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 2974 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Sustainability-Oriented Optimization and Decision Making of Community Buildings under Seismic Hazard

by Ghazanfar Ali Anwar, Mudasir Hussain, Muhammad Zeshan Akber, Mustesin Ali Khan and Aatif Ali Khan

Sustainability 2023, 15(5), 4385; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15054385 - 1 Mar 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1348

Abstract

Optimization and decision-making tools are often utilized to enhance the performance of community buildings under extreme events, but this may compromise the ability of future generations to enhance performance. Hence, a sustainability-oriented approach is required to enhance the performance of community buildings under extreme events. In this context, this paper proposes an optimization and decision-making framework considering multiple performance indicators, including socioeconomic and environmental consequences as well as retrofit costs. These performance indicators are assessed by utilizing performance-based assessment methodologies in terms of sustainability dimensions. The performance indicators are then exploited as multiple performance objectives in a genetic optimization to determine the Pareto optimal solutions. Finally, the Pareto optimal solutions are utilized for decision making to extract ideal solutions for the given retrofit costs. The ideal solutions provide trade-offs between the consequences of extreme events and the retrofit costs required to reduce the consequences of extreme events. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities in Seismic Risk Prevention, Mitigation and Adaptation)

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27 pages, 7781 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development of a Fuzzy Inference System Based Rapid Visual Screening Method for Seismic Assessment of Buildings Presented on a Case Study of URM Buildings

by Nurullah Bektaş, Ferenc Lilik and Orsolya Kegyes-Brassai

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 16318; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142316318 - 6 Dec 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1626

Abstract

Many conventional rapid visual screening (RVS) methods for the seismic assessment of existing structures have been designed over the past three decades, tailored to site-specific building features. The objective of implementing RVS is to identify the buildings most susceptible to earthquake-induced damage. RVS methods are utilized to classify buildings according to their risk level to prioritize the buildings at high seismic risk. The conventional RVS methods are employed to determine the damage after an earthquake or to make safety assessments in order to predict the damage that may occur in a building before an impending earthquake. Due to the subjectivity of the screener based on visual examination, previous research has shown that these conventional methods can lead to vagueness and uncertainty. Additionally, because RVS methods were found to be conservative and to be partially accurate, as well as the fact that some expert opinion based developed RVS techniques do not have the capability of further enhancement, it was recommended that RVS methods be developed. Therefore, this paper discusses a fuzzy logic based RVS method development to produce an accurate building features responsive examination method for unreinforced masonry (URM) structures, as well as a way of revising existing RVS methods. In this context, RVS parameters are used in a fuzzy-inference system hierarchical computational pattern to develop the RVS method. The fuzzy inference system based RVS method was developed considering post-earthquake building screening data of 40 URM structures located in Albania following the earthquake in 2019 as a case study. In addition, FEMA P-154, a conventional RVS method, was employed to screen considered buildings to comparatively demonstrate the efficiency of the developed RVS method in this study. The findings of the study revealed that the proposed method with an accuracy of 67.5% strongly outperformed the conventional RVS method by 42.5%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities in Seismic Risk Prevention, Mitigation and Adaptation)

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24 pages, 7519 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improving the Earthquake Resilience of Primary Schools in the Border Regions of Neighbouring Countries

by João M. C. Estêvão, Antonio Morales-Esteban, Luis F. Sá, Mónica A. Ferreira, Bruno Tomás, Carlos Esteves, Vítor Barreto, Ana Carreira, Alfredo Braga, Maria-Victoria Requena-Garcia-Cruz, Emilio Romero-Sanchez, Jaime de-Miguel-Rodriguez, Maria-Luisa Segovia-Verjel, Beatriz Zapico Blanco and Carlos Sousa Oliveira

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 15976; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142315976 - 30 Nov 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1875

Abstract

This work summarises the strategy adopted in the European research project PERSISTAH. It aims to increase the resilience of the population, focusing on the existing primary schools in the Algarve (Portugal) and Huelva (Spain) regions. Software was developed to assess the seismic safety of these schools, considering different earthquake scenarios. Seismic retrofitting measures were studied and numerically tested. Some of them were also implemented in the retrofitting activities of two case study schools (one in each country). It was found that the adopted ground motion prediction equations (GMPEs) considerably affect the results obtained with the software, especially for offshore earthquake scenarios. Furthermore, the results show that the masonry buildings would be the most damaged school typologies for all the scenarios considered. Additionally, a set of guidelines was created to support the school community and the technicians related to the construction industry. The goal of these documents is to increase the seismic resilience of the population. Different activities were carried out to train schoolteachers in seismic safety based on the guidelines produced, obtaining positive feedback from them. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities in Seismic Risk Prevention, Mitigation and Adaptation)

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24 pages, 12717 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Validation of a High Precision GNSS System for Monitoring of Civil Infrastructures

by Daniele Cinque, Mauro Saccone, Roberto Capua, Daniele Spina, Corrado Falcolini and Stefano Gabriele

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10984; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710984 - 2 Sep 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1405

Abstract

In recent years, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technologies, which take full advantage of both real-time kinematic (RTK) and precise point positioning (PPP), managed to reach centimeter-level positioning accuracy with ambiguity resolution (AR) quick convergence techniques. One great advantage over traditional structural health monitoring (SHM) systems is that GNSS technologies will be functional in disaster management situations, when terrestrial communication links become unavailable. In this study, a multi-GNSS system, based on GPS and Galileo constellations and exploiting advanced RTK and PPP-AR technologies with update rate of 100 Hz is tested on two benchmark structures as an SHM system. The first case study served as a baseline to outline the methodology: first, a setup phase of the instrumentation, then a signal processing phase and last, the validation of the results. The methodology was then applied to a real-case scenario, in which the GNSS was tested on a road bridge. A comparative analysis with the results acquired by a set of accelerometers showed that the GNSS was able to identify the crossing of heavy vehicles. The work is paving the way for the development of an affordable and efficient multi-GNSS-based tool for the monitoring of civil infrastructures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities in Seismic Risk Prevention, Mitigation and Adaptation)

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27 pages, 7967 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Framework and Tool for Knowledge-Based Seismic Risk Assessment of School Buildings: SLaMA-School

by Livio Pedone, Simona Bianchi, Sonia Giovinazzi and Stefano Pampanin

Sustainability 2022, 14(16), 9982; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14169982 - 12 Aug 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1554

Abstract

When dealing with seismic risk assessment at a large scale, the collection of relevant building data is still deemed a challenging task, often leading to limited building knowledge and, consequently, high uncertainties. Therefore, innovative yet standardized frameworks and adaptive tools are needed to support the seismic risk assessment of buildings. Towards this goal, this paper proposes a simplified multi-knowledge seismic assessment methodology involving the analytical-mechanical SLaMA (Simple Lateral Mechanism Analysis) method. An ad-hoc data collection form is first developed to identify the building vulnerabilities by merging and building on existing institutional forms at the international level and integrating new input data. The data are then used to implement the SLaMA-based methodology, at different building knowledge levels, to assess the seismic safety and the economic losses of buildings. The proposed data structure and approach is planned to be included in the “Seismic-Response” module for PELL (Public Energy Living Lab)-School platform, aiming to become a standardized and interoperable database for relevant data of Italian schools and a dashboard for allowing stakeholders to continuously monitor their energetic and static/seismic conditions. The paper discusses the potential and effectiveness of the proposed procedure for large-scale applications and its integration into platforms assessing the energy efficiency of buildings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities in Seismic Risk Prevention, Mitigation and Adaptation)

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30 pages, 14639 KiB

Open AccessArticle

System-Wide Seismic Risk Assessment of Port Facilities; Application to the Port of Thessaloniki, Greece

by Stavroula Fotopoulou, Stella Karafagka, Anna Karatzetzou and Kyriazis Pitilakis

Sustainability 2022, 14(3), 1424; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14031424 - 26 Jan 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2547

Abstract

Damages in port facilities during past seismic events have led to widespread direct and indirect losses, with serious impact on the economic, operational, and emergency management of the port itself and, as a consequence, on the related society. Ground shaking is among the most widespread sources of seismic damage to port structures and infrastructure, together with the induced phenomena principally associated with the liquefaction of loose, saturated soils that often prevail in coastal areas. This study presents a methodology for the seismic risk assessment of port facilities which considers the combined effects of ground shaking and liquefaction as well as various interdependencies among port elements, which affect the port’s operation and, consequently, the total risk impact. The methodology, based on either probabilistic or deterministic scenario-based approaches, is demonstrated through an application to the Thessaloniki port, one of the most important ports in Southeastern Europe and the largest transit-trade port in Greece. The systemic risk analysis of the port is carried out using as a performance indicator the reduction in the container and bulk cargo movements affected by the seismic performance of the piers, the waterfront, and container/cargo handling equipment, as well as their interaction with the seismic performance of the electric power system. Two different functionality analyses of the port system are performed, one basic and one less conservative alternative. The results of the probabilistic seismic risk assessment are illustrated in terms of annual probabilities of collapse and loss exceedance curves for each individual port component as well as normalized performance loss for the whole port system for the container and cargo terminal. For the scenario-based deterministic approach, the results are given in terms of risk maps presenting the spatial distribution of damages/losses for all components as well as in terms of the expected loss of performance of the port system. The proposed methodology may provide the basis for an efficient seismic risk management of ports. It may also be adjusted and applied to other port infrastructures in Greece and worldwide considering additional components, interactions among elements, and different earthquake induced hazards. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities in Seismic Risk Prevention, Mitigation and Adaptation)

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