PSI - Issue 78

Francesca Mattei et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 78 (2026) 2007–2014

2008

1. Introduction The assessment of seismic risk at territorial scale is an increasingly discussed topic in the field of earthquake engineering, being it provides useful information about any critical issues affecting the buildings as a whole and allows preventive measures to be taken in relation to them. In Italy, this theme is particularly heartfelt, due to the large number of historical centers present in its territory, several of which were destroyed to a greater or lesser extent destroyed by recent seismic events, such as, L'Aquila 2009 and Central Italy 2016-2017 earthquakes. As for the other scales (i.e. manufact, urban), it is calculated through different information based, essentially, on hazard, exposure and vulnerability. As it is well known, hazard is described by seismic hazard maps in which the entity/distribution of such parameters in the selected region, generally represented by peak ground acceleration, for different reference periods, are reported; exposure is deducted by the number of people and the activities carried out; vulnerability is related to the structural response of the buildings, depending on mechanical characteristics of materials, type of construction, presence of consolidation works already carried out, etc. Seismic risk can be strongly influenced by the type of material adopted in the building heritage: for example, in Italian historical center (which represent an important part of the cultural heritage), most of the ancient/old buildings are constituted by masonry, which often has poor mechanical characteristics and construction methods that are not exactly standard. In this field, several studies have been carried out, such as Sulla et al. (2023, 2024) and D’Amato et al. (2021) in which modeling criteria both in linear and non linear fields are addressed, while Caprili et al. (2024) explore possible new solutions for the seismic and energetic retrofit of existing masonry buildings. Regarding seismic risk assessment of structures and infrastructures, new methodologies to evaluate seismic risk at several levels were developed in last years, often based on expeditious simplified methods, such as Gavarini (2001), Palmiotta et al. (2024) and Sulla et al. (2024), while Del Carlo et al. (2025) focused on the role of the whole urban asset in the management of seismic risk. The research is actually focused also on bridges, where seismic expeditious multilevel risk is a very hard goal, as reported in the papers of Principi et al. (2025), Natali et al. (2025). In the present paper, expeditious assessment of territorial seismic risk of the historical center of Cosenza, located in the South of Italy, is analyzed and described. The study was conducted through a method proposed by Tuscany region Bacci et al. (2018, 2019) that allowing to calculate seismic risk of a zone through the acquisition of information easy to obtain, without the acquisition of other detailed and often difficult to obtain information requested by similar expeditious methods. The work was conducted within the Italian Project GENESIS “ Seismic risk manaGEmeNt for the touristic valorization of thE hiStorIcal centers of Southern Italy ” funded by Italy’s PON MIUR “Research and Innovation” 2014-2020 program and FSC, which has the aim to mitigate the seismic risk of historic centers in the South of Italy, for cultural and tourism enhancement. 2. Case study Cosenza is an Italian municipality with a population of 63.734 inhabitants and the provincial capital of Calabria. The origins of the city date back to at least the 8th century b.C.. It was first conquered by the Bruzi, then by the Romans, and in the 16th century, it was designated the capital of Calabria Citeriore. Known as the ‘Athens of Calabria’ in reference to its cultural tradition, since 1511 it has been home to the Accademia Cosentina in the historic center, one of the first academies founded in Europe. Cosenza city can be divided into two parts: the modern area and the historical area too (Fig. 1). The historical center is characterised by ancient/old masonry buildings belonging by several ages, with an average height of no more than three or four storeys. As said before, over time, the ancient part of the city has been abandoned by the population, preferring to move to the modern area, causing the progressive deterioration of the buildings.