The economic assessment of seismic damage: an example for the 2012 event in Northern Italy

The study aims at quantifying the monetary losses caused by a moderate earthquake happened on a densely populated and economically well-developed area. The loss estimation refers to the damage of residential buildings and takes into account the cumulative effects of the sequence of the 2012 Emilia earthquake, characterized by a series of shocks with a magnitude range between 5.5 and 6 that lasted for nearly a month. The earthquake ground shaking was characterized by long-period component amplifications due to the presence of thick banks of sediments; nevertheless, there was a great damage to ordinary residential structures, characterized by short periods. The present study estimated the building damage using an approach based on the definition of the EMS-98 macroseismic scale, which is able to depict a damage scenario by means of observed intensity. Then we used the value of real estate assets (OMI) to quantify the economic losses, instead of the commonly adopted cost of reconstruction, because it is both an official and a yearly updated economic indicator. As the trade negotiations value is easily available throughout all the national territory, the present loss assessment can be effortlessly reproduced in case of future events. The proposed method consists of a multidisciplinary approach taking advantage of seismic, engineering, and economic skills, which is able to depict an attainable ex-post losses scenarios.