Seismic risk scenarios are obtained for an informal settlement in Mérida (Venezuela), which is representative of an important number of urban areas in earthquake-prone regions of the developing world. The vulnerability indices of the buildings range between 0.64 and 0.80 on a scale of 0 to 1. In an intensity IX earthquake scenario, more than 32% of the buildings would suffer damage of grade 4 (...

In seismic risk mitigation policies, fragility functions of existing buildings play a fundamental role. In this paper, a procedure to develop analytical fragility curves for Moment Resisting Frame Reinforced Concrete buildings is presented. The design of the selected building typologies was performed according to the codes at the time of construction using force-based methods and the state of t...

Large-scale parallel finite-difference method (FDM) simulations of seismic wave propagation have been conducted using the Earth Simulator in order to clarify the complex seismic wavefield resulting from heterogeneities in structures and the source rupture process during the Hyogo-ken Nanbu (Kobe) earthquake (Mj 7.2; Mw 6.9) in 1995. High-resolution simulation using 240 nodes (1920 processing el...

Numerical model simulations, combined with tide-gauge and satellite altimetry data, reveal that wave amplitudes, directionality, and global propagation patterns of the 26 December 2004 Sumatra tsunami were primarily determined by the orientation and intensity of the offshore seismic line source and subsequently by the trapping effect of mid-ocean ridge topographic waveguides.

A real-time seismic monitoring infrastructure has been recently installed and it is actually operating in southern Italy, whose main purposes are to rapidly issue an earthquake alert, to provide near-real-time maps of the peak ground motion and intensity shaking and to test the feasibility of earthquake early warning following moderate to large earthquakes occurring along the southern Apenninic...