A 2021 survey of disaster risk reduction in Italy

1. DISASTERS IN ITALY
ENVIRONMENTAL AND CULTURAL RESILIENCE
Prof. David Alexander

2. DISASTRI IN ITALIA
RESILIENZA AMBIENTALE E CULTURALE
Prof. David Alexander

3. Fall
of
the
Giants
Giulio
Romano,
1529

4. Organisational
systems:
management
Social
systems:
behaviour
Natural
systems:
function
Technical
systems:
malfunction
Vulnerability
Hazard
Resilience
Political
systems:
decisions

5. Resilience
Resistance
Risk Susceptibility
VULNERABILITY
Physical
(including natural,
built, technological)
Social
(including cultural,
political, economic)
Environment
Attributes
Source: McEntire 2001
Liabilities
Capabilities

6. Italian civil protection:-
• basic law 225/1991 set up the system
• 'Augustus': a support function model
• 3,600 volunteer organisations, 36
federated nationally
• national emergency operations
coordination in Rome
• devolution: Bassanini law 1998 (to 2018)
• the 20 regions train, organize
and run the local show

7. Cabinet Office (Council of Ministers)
Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior
National Department of Civil Protection
Undersecretary of State for Civil Prot.
National volunteer
organisations
National emergency command centres, Rome
Department of Civil Protection
National Fire and Rescue Services
Volunteer organisations, etc.
Regional emergency
operations centres
Provincial emergency
operations centres
Municipal mixed
operations centres (COMs)
Municipal
police forces
Fire brigades
Police forces
Provincial prefectures:
CCS operations centres
Local volunteer
organisations
Municipal operations
centres (COCs)
Armed forces

8. Fabrizio Curcio, Head of Civil Protection
Gen. Francesco Paolo Figiuolo
Extraordinary Commissioner for the Covid-19 Emergency

9. The
situation
on the
ground

10. What
was this
absurd
structure
doing in
a seismic
zone?
Sant'Agostino di Ferrara (FE), 20-5-2012

11. Dosso (FE), 20-5-2012
...and
this?

12. Poor quality
building
(low seismic
resistance)
Proximity
to epicentre
and fault
rupture
Topographic
amplification
Sedimentary
amplification
Q E
T S
Concentration
of casualties
C
C = f { E,Q,S,T }
Deaths
Injuries
Q E
T S

13. Mid-floor damage to multi-occupancy building
Intertia effect
Basal acceleration
Interaction = damage
Lack of stiffness in frame
L'Aquila
city

14. Male
Female
All victims in
L'Aquila city
centre area
n=186
To NE:
unreinforced
masonry
buildings
To SW:
reinforced
concrete
buildings

15. Area of
comparatively
light damage
and no
casualties
Area of sporadic
damage and
few casualties
Area of
topographic
amplification,
with major
damage and
casualties
Area of roof and
stairwell collapse:
limited casualties
500 m

18. Topographic
amplification
Roof and
stairwell collapse
Sporadic
damage
Light damage
(no deaths)
Pensioners'
disaster area
Students'
disaster area

19. Predicted
and actual
profile of
308 deaths
in the
L'Aquila
earthquake
of 6th April
2009

20. In the L'Aquila data set, above the age of 70
there were 19-24% more deaths than
predicted by local demographic profiles,
amounting to 59-74 individuals out of 308.
Elderly people - calculated excess over the
demographic predictor:-
• women: 40 (13% of total mortality)
• men: 19 (6.2% of total mortality).

21. The L'Aquila earthquake, like many others
elsewhere, showed a substantial gender
bias in:
• deaths
• PTSD/depression
• unemployment
• social burdens

22. Transitional housing
and social aspects

23. C.A.S.E. - Complessi Antisismici
Sostenibili ed Ecocompatibili
• 4,600 apartments in 184 buildings on
19 sites
• 15,500 people accommodated
• €280,607 per apartment
(€3,875 per square meter
of living space)

24. C.A.S.E. at Assergi - built on
an unstabilised asbestos dump

25. Lack of wastewater
treatment facilities

27. €1,427 per
base
isolator:
40 per
building

28. M.A.P. - Moduli abitativi provvisori:-
• standard prefabs without base isolation
• 54 sites, half of them in L'Aquila city
• 8,500 people accommodated

29. Problems with CASE and MAP sites:-
• social fragmentation leads to depression,
isolation and marginalisation
• total lack of services and transportation
• induced dependency on private transport
without infrastructure improvement
• exclusion of single person 'families'

30. Problems with L'Aquila recovery policy:-
• stagnation of reconstruction through
lack of funds and planning
• political paralysis and intimidation by
central government
• massive rise in unemployment
• local inflation, especially of
house rents
• loss of basic services

31. Housing and social aspects - a balance sheet:-
• limited progress in remedying deficiencies in
services
• no let-up in socio-psychological problems
(PASSI Project)
• predictable stagnation of recovery and
reconstruction
• re-creation of community largely
facilitated by non-State entities
• induced aid dependency of population
not counteracted by much activism

32. Earthquake
Political
response
National
Regional
Local
Permanent
reconstruction
Bad
(functional
problems)
Good
(functionality
maintained)
Elections
Amelioration
Political impact
on reconstruction
Suffering
Recovery
Transitional
housing and
settlement
Public image
of politicians
A reconstruction model

33. The L'Aquila
recovery process
has been driven by
short-term political
expediency,
leading to the
repetition of
ancient policy
errors, particularly
lack of democratic
governance

34. The trial of the "L'Aquila Seven"

35. National Major Risks Commission
L'Aquila crisis meeting, L'Aquila 31-3-2009

36. "Professor Barberi concludes that
there is no reason for saying that a
sequence of low magnitude shocks
could be considered the precursor of
a strong event."

38. "The charges against these scientists are both
unfair and naïve."
"The basis for these indictments appears to be
that the scientists failed to alert the population of
L'Aquila of an impending earthquake."
"It is manifestly unfair for scientists to be
criminally charged for failing to act upon
information that the international scientific
community would consider inadequate as a basis
for issuing a warning."

40. Crucial aspect: the violent foreshock of
00:30 hrs, three hours before the main
shock - people left their homes.
In Paganica the civil protection service
sent around a loudspeaker van to
reassure people and tell them to go
home and stop worrying. They did. Five
died and 40 were seriously injured.

41. Weakest point in the prosecution's
case: proving the link between
official pronouncements and
people's behaviour that led to deaths
and injuries.

42. The defendants were eventually largely
absolved - not unexpectedly.
It was the most widely debated and
thoroughly misunderstood event in
world science for many decades.

43. Significance of the L'Aquila trial:-
it was a symbolic move in the struggle
for judicial independence, an end to the
impunity of politicians, and an end to
negligence in public risk management.

44. Some criticisms of the Italian
approach to emergency management

45. Some positive attributes of
Italian civil protection:-
• a huge, well-developed, well-trained
network of volunteer organisations
• vast experience in emergency response
• well-developed legislation with some
innovative aspects
• a participatory approach to emergency
management
• the system is well-developed at all levels

46. The recommended approach:
emergency response begins at the
local level.
The Italian approach: in L'Aquila
local administration was swept aside
and remained paralysed for a long
time.

47. The recommended approach:
response should be proportional to
the size of the emergency.
The Italian approach: overwhelming
force, regardless of cost.

48. The orthodox approach:
emergencies need an incident
command structure.
The Italian approach: there isn't
much of one.

49. The orthodox approach: local self-
sufficiency and autonomous decision
making must be encouraged.
The Italian approach: either supply it all
from Rome or abandon the local
authorities to their own devices.

50. The orthodox approach: transitional
settlement should not impede
reconstruction.
The Italian approach: mind-boggling sums
of money have been spent on transitional
settlement, and so far very few funds have
been allotted to reconstruction.

51. The orthodox approach: in transitional
settlement the social fabric should be
preserved.
The Italian approach: in L'Aquila no thought
whatsoever was given to this problem and
the result is a high incidence of socio-
psychological pathologies among the
survivors.

52. The recommended approach: guidelines,
standards and norms should be issued to ensure
integrated disaster response and training.
The Italian approach: the guidelines are
incomplete and out of date,
and the training has been
foisted onto the regional
governments without
providing any
harmonising criteria.

53. The orthodox approach: emergency measures
should be used when normal measures cannot
be.
The Italian approach: in less than a decade 600
ordinances have authorized
the expenditure of more
than €10 billion, some of
that on projects that had
nothing to do with
emergencies and were
not really useful at all.

54. The orthodox approach: disasters lead
to improvements in safety and security.
The Italian approach:
disasters open a
Pandora's box of
bad practice.

55. The recommended approach: disaster risk
reduction (DRR) should be a comprehensive
process of creating resilience.
The Italian approach:
three municipalities
out of 8,104 have
taken this to heart.
Others have
pretended to do
something.

56. Conclusions

57. 2010s: Neoliberalism or more
assistentialism? Vote garnering
versus economic stringency.
1908: Liberalism - the state is
not a big source of disaster relief
1980: "Assistentialism" - the state
is a major source of largesse.

58. Organisation Resources
Self-organisation
Imposed
organisation
Voluntarism
Community disaster planning
Laws, protocols, directives
Standards, norms, guidelines
Community
resources
Governmental
resources
Donations
International resources
Government
Civil society
Assets
Plans

59. Five key messages:-
• provision of welfare should not inhibit processes of
recovery and growth
• resilience is multi-faceted: are inter-connections
more important than facets?
• sustainability applies to disaster risk reduction as
well as to daily life
• governance and protection of
livelihoods are the root of DRR
• common sense logic does not
necessarily drive the politics of
disaster recovery

60. How to grow the culture of prevention
so that it is more than merely a
culture of reaction to adverse events.

61. Encouraging developments:
Area Food, Amatrice

62. Finally, the Covid-19 balance sheet:-
• generally good organisation
Istituto Superiore di Sanità
Technical-Scientific Advisory Committee
• strong leadership from central government
• generally good, consistent communication
• wide variation in regional responses
• shortage of vaccines due to EU caution in
procurement
• significant social tensions
• people were much affected by the life-and-death
struggle in Bergamo

63. Number of coronavirus deaths per day in Italy

64. Thank you for your attention!
Grazie per la vostra attenzione!
david.alexander@ucl.ac.uk
emergency-planning.blogspot.com
www.slideshare.net/dealexander