1. PREFACE
2. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE EC-PROJECT SERGISAI
• PARTNER FINAL REPORTS:

In this report the results of the EC-Project SERGISAI are presented.

It is organized in the following way: to a brief description of the organization of the work and of the relations which have been established among partners to complete the project, follows an executive summary, which gives an overall idea of the work that has been carried out in the project, as well as the main results and the main achievements. Then the seven final reports of each partner show in much deeper detail what every part of the working group did. In the executive summary the factors and the elements of the prototype and of its applications received the greatest attention, as this was the common work of all the partners within the project. In the separate final reports also side-work as well as surveys and improvement of existing models to calculate various steps of seismic risk carried out within each working group are explained.

The project SERGISAI developed a computer prototype where a methodology for seismic risk assessment has been implemented. Standard procedural codes, Geographic Information Systems and Artificial Intelligence Techniques compose the prototype, which permits to carry out a seismic risk assessment going through all the necessary steps. Risk is expressed in terms of expected damage, given by the combination of hazard and vulnerability. Two parallel paths have been followed with respect to the hazard factor: the probabilistic and the deterministic approach. The first provides the hazard analysis based on historical data, propagation models, and known seismic sources. The deterministic approach provides the input for scenarios, by selecting a specific ground motion.

With respect to the vulnerability factor, several systems have been taken into account apart from buildings, which are usually considered in this type of analysis. Defining vulnerability as a measure of how prone is a system to be damaged in case of earthquake, an attempt has been made to move from the assessment of individual objects to the evaluation of the performance of urban and regional areas.

Another step towards an approach which can serve better civil protection and land use planning agencies has been made by adapting the analysis to the following geographical levels: local, sub-regional and regional. Both the hazard and the vulnerability factors have been treated in the most suitable way for each one, in terms of level of detail, kind of parameters and units of measure. Identifying various geographical levels of analysis is not a mere question of dimension; on the contrary entities to be studied correspond to areas defined by administrative and geographical borders. The prototype was applied in the following areas: Toscana in Italy, for the regional level, the Garfagnana area in Toscana, for the sub-regional level, and some areas in Barcelona, Spain, for the local level.

Elements and procedures to carry out a proper seismic risk assessment have been implemented in a computer architecture made of two main cores, a GIS (Arc/Info) and an Expert System shell (Nexpert), connected by a bridge. A specific interface has been designed for the prototype, to help end-users navigate among all the programs, codes and maps without having necessarily to know each one of them in detail.

The project has been managed through the Scientific Coordinating Committee (SCC) comprising the Scientist in Charge of each partner, under the chairmanship of the Project Coordinator.

Several working meetings, many of which in Milan, were held by various task groups of the partners so as to develop and make function the prototype as well as for preparing data and maps in the format necessary for their implementation in it. Those task-groups, as shown in the following picture are: Seismology and hazard, buildings vulnerability, slope instability, urban and systemic vulnerability, GIS and software implementation.

Furthermore three meetings with all the partners were held, two in Italy (the first in Milan at the beginning of the project and the last in Garfagnana, chosen to show the partners one of the test areas) an one in Spain (the second, held in Barcelona City). The results and the discussions held during those meetings were reported in three Minutes which provided a very useful guideline for the development of the project.

The financial distribution of the budget among the partners is described in the following table so as to permit evaluating the project, its results and the investment in personnel, in software and hardware necessary to develop the prototype and its applications.