The Sensitive Relief method and the identity of a place

The loss of identity affecting places and landscapes represents an important cultural component in environmental risk. Most studies concerning the phenomenon of earthquakes and the episodes of post-seismic reconstruction carried out in Italy tend to focus above all on the technical data of the seism, and fail to take into account the aspects associated with the identity of the places involved. Experiences such as the recent post-earthquake reconstructions in South of Italy, show how the damage to the identity of places, can actually be worsened if the reconstruction processes are not based on a well established repertoire of methodologies of urban analysis and a solid planning and environmental culture. Starting out from these premises, this article aims to illustrate the analytical method of the Sensitive Relief in order to identify the places, their characters and the elements of the urban landscape to safeguarde, which do not show up in traditional map-making but which constitute the contemporary identity of the urban settlement and can feature in a map that renders such places intelligible. Thus the article shows a case study of a Sensitive Relief with its relative complex map featuring an historical center of Irpinia, a Southern Italy area seriously damaged by the 1980 earthquake, investigated in the framework of the Regional Center of Competence "Analysis and Monitoring of the Environmental Risk" AMRA.