Rapid Damage Scenario Assessment for Earthquake Emergency Management

The rapid availability of reliable damage statistics, after the occurrence of a major earthquake, is an essential mitigation strategy to drive and support emergency intervention operations. Unfortunately, the latency in collecting and organizing actual damage information has a substantial impact on the efficiency of the initial phases of the intervention framework. To speedup preliminary management operations, a quick, although, coarse prediction of the expected damage is highly desirable. For this purpose, we have developed a system for rapid damage estimation. The system, presently implemented for the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, relies on the existing seismological monitoring infrastructure of the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS), which is responsible for delivering earthquake alerts in northeastern Italy. In case of a major earthquake event, the predicted damage is automatically computed using the OpenQuake software engine by means of ad hoc structur...