Publication Date:
2020-05-07
Description:
One of the challenges on disasters’ understanding is the assessment of impact from a more global
perspective, adding to their scenario of injuries, deaths, homeless and economic losses, those
effects that are mostly widespread and could last for a long period of time, driving to a serious
disruption of a community or a society.
Seismic disasters are not just the results of the energy released by the earthquake or buildings’
vulnerability: social, demographic, cultural parameters may instead play a crucial, yet
underestimated, role.
We carried out a pilot study to investigate the demographic perspective of the impact of 1968
Belice and 1980 Irpinia-Basilicata earthquakes on local communities. The macroseismic MCS
intensities were used as a primary parameter upon which the demographic scenario was derived.
Population annual growth rates, the ageing index, the child-woman ratio, and the Gini index from
the demographic data census of the period 1951-2011 were analyzed to assess population
dynamics, age structure evolution and its level of spatial concentration within the disasters’ areas.
Demographic data were then matched to macroseismic intensities to outline a new, original
analysis which describes the impact of the two seismic disasters with a broad multi-parameter
perspective.
The results highlight also the existence of a general marginality of most affected areas with
respect to the processes of population growth, ageing and fertility, as well as for distribution of
the regional population, occurring already before the disasters stroke. This marginality might have
enhanced the impact of disasters by significantly increasing vulnerability.
Description:
Published
Description:
SE107
Description:
4T. Sismicità dell'Italia
Description:
JCR Journal
Keywords:
seismic disaster
;
demography
;
Belice 1968 earthquake
;
Irpinia-Basilicata 1980 earthquake
;
demographic perspective of some italian seismic disasters
Repository Name:
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV)
Type:
article
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