Seismic Safety of Buildings vs Other Risks in Italy: Preliminary Analysis

Performance-based earthquake engineering, typically, computes the rate of seismic events causing structural failure as a measure of seismic risk. The 2015-2017 Italian research program, Rischio Implicito – Norme Tecniche per le Costruzioni, has evaluated the failure rates of some code-conforming buildings varying in structural typology and configuration, designed ad-hoc for three Italian sites characterized by low, mid and high seismic hazard levels. In the modern practice of decision analysis, the concept of micromort, defined as one-in-a-million chance of death, is used to compare different sources of risk people are subject to. The goal of this study is to compare the annual fatality rates, due to the seismic failure of code-conforming Italian structures, with micromorts (per year) associated with different causes in Italy. To obtain these micromorts/year, data from the Italian national statistical institute are analyzed. Results, although very preliminary and subjected to the working assumptions, seems to indicate that the probability of death due to an earthquake event is lower than the one due to the other analyzed causes of death, especially for comparatively low seismicity sites.