1 Introduction

Addressing Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) is increasingly becoming a primary goal of modern society. Achieving effective results requires action taken at all scales, from global to local (SFDRR 2015, Poljanšek et al. 2017; Casajus Valles et al. 2020). In this respect, knowledge plays a primary role, as it can empower policy and practice to make informed decisions and coordinate the complex actions required (Weichselgartner and Pigeon 2015).

Despite the considerable amount of scientific information available and action already taken in recent decades, disaster-related losses are on the rise almost worldwide (White et al. 2001; UNDRR 2023) due to the increase in risk factors, namely hazard, exposure, vulnerability (and in spite of the increasing coping capacity), caused by the unfavorable evolution of some risk drivers, including (GFDRR 2016):

  • climate change,

  • proliferation of industrial plants where dangerous substances are used or stored,

  • diffuse and uncontrolled urbanization.

The last two drivers, combined with the increase in hazard due to the first driver, also create favorable conditions to the occurrence of combined and cascading effects.

As far as seismic risk is concerned, several earthquakes each year cause damage and severe consequences for human health and property all over the world. On average, 18 major (magnitude 7.0–7.9) and one large (magnitude 8.0 or higher) earthquakes per year are recorded. Three of the earthquakes so far occurred in the 21st century are among the largest and the deadliest (https://www.usgs.gov/programs/earthquake-hazards/lists-maps-and-statistics): 2004 Sumatra, 2008 Sichuan (China), and 2011 Japan. However, less energetic events, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, can be even more deadly, due the vulnerability and exposure of the impacted area (Dolce and Di Bucci 2017). Some of these cases are also a reminder that cascading effects, involving both natural and anthropogenic hazards, must be taken into account when dealing with earthquakes. Multi-hazard risk approaches have been promoted to deal with this type of concern and brought to the attention of the Global Science Forum of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (GSF-OECD; Dolce et al. 2012).

DRR encompasses the entire risk cycle, including prevention and preparedness, forecasting, emergency management and recovery, as well as reconstruction activities after major events. Sound decision-making in this field can be reliably supported by data, products, models, information and advice from science.

DRR is based on two key players: technical decision-makers and scientists. Above them are the political decision-makers, i.e. those who express the political will and support risk reduction activities through political choices that are in line with the voters’ mandate (Dolce and Di Bucci 2014). Although the relevance and role of decision-makers and scientists are well known and mutually recognized, how to successfully build their interaction to obtain effective DRR is still an evolving path (see, among many others, Cramer et al. 2018; DG-R&I 2019; SAPEA 2019). Literature highlights how this interaction is becoming increasingly important (e.g., Ranchod and Vas 2019), even though relevant gaps—epistemological, strategic, institutional—have been also underlined (e.g., Albris et al. 2020), along with some proposals to fill them (e.g., Gaillard and Mercer 2012). There is an increasing need to complement the classical top-down approach with a bottom-up one (Amaratunga et al. 2018) and to use them jointly to achieve DRR, starting from risk assessment and deciding on actions on the basis of a dialogue phase.

Many civil protection organizations and emergency management agencies around the world have a formalized collaboration between decision-makers and scientists (Dolce and Di Bucci 2022, and references therein). Some examples concerning Europe are described by De Groeve and Casajus Valles (2015). More importantly, the European law establishing the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, Decision 1313/2013/EU as amended, explicitly acknowledges the role of science in this field by introducing the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network, which is “a network of relevant civil protection and disaster management actors and institutions, including centers of excellence, universities and researchers […], together with the Commission” (Regulation (EU) 2021/836).

Even in the light of this brief overview, it is clear that the relationship between scientific community and civil protection exists at national level in many countries in different parts of the world, as well as on a European and international scale. Since it is a complex collaboration, critical issues may emerge (OECD 2015).

Compared to other countries, in Italy the challenge of building an effective collaboration between decision-makers and scientists has been faced and elaborated for years, particularly with reference to the so-called civil protection risks (according to the Civil Protection Code, Legislative Decree 1/2018), which include, among others, seismic risk.

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the contribution of science, particularly of earthquake and structural engineering science, to civil protection on the basis of the experience gained at national scale within the Italian civil protection system. The focus will be firstly on the complex relationship between civil protection and the scientific community, and on its governance, an internationally well-known and discussed issue. In Italy, this relationship is mainly based on the network of the Competence Centers. Then, attention will be paid to those Centers dealing in particular with seismic risk and on their activities and scientific products. Some of the products released by the earthquake and structural engineering community are summarized for illustrative purpose.

2 Civil protection organization and scientific community in Italy

Civil protection Disaster Risk Management (DRM) comprises a series of activities that can be arranged in a cycle made of four main phases: forecasting, prevention, emergency management and recovery. In case of destructive events, like strong earthquakes, there is also a further phase concerning reconstruction, which is not usually entrusted to civil protection.

In Italy, civil protection is a function involving the whole national community, which is organised in a system called Servizio Nazionale della Protezione Civile (SNPC, National Civil Protection Service; see Dolce and Di Bucci 2017, for a more extensive description). Different individuals and organizations contribute with their activities, expertise and skills to the overall risk mitigation objectives of the SNPC, whose mandate is to protect human life and health, property, cultural heritage, human settlements and the environment from all natural or human-made disasters.

The National Civil Protection Department (DPC), acting on behalf of the Prime Minister, is entrusted with the coordination of this complex system. All ministries, with their national operational structures, including Fire Brigades, Police, Army, Navy, Air Force, Carabinieri, State Forest Corps and Financial Police, participate in the SNPC. Moreover, Prefectures, regional and local civil protection organizations contribute to the actions of the system. Also, public and private companies in the fields of motorways, roads and railways, energy and telecommunications, as well as voluntary associations and individual citizens, are part of the SNPC. Voluntary associations, in addition to their general purpose of assisting population, may also have specific purposes linked to particular technical-professional skills (e.g., engineers, geologists, medical doctors, etc.).

The Civil Protection Operational Committee is the highest strategic body in which representatives of the organizations and administrations that are part of the SNPC are called upon to contribute to the decision-making process in the case of important emergencies, when a national coordination center, called DiComaC (Direction of Command and Control), is established in the affected area.

The SNPC deals with all natural and many anthropogenic risks, including earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, floods, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, as well as industrial, nuclear, technological, transport, supply network and environmental accidents.

An important asset of the SNPC is the scientific community: it fully participates in the DRM, allowing for the development and/or prompt translation of up-to-date scientific knowledge into decisions and actions.

Generally speaking, the scientific community can provide different types of contribution to civil protection, that can be summarised as (Dolce and Di Bucci 2015):

  1. (i)

    well-structured scientific activities, constantly performed by scientific institutions on behalf of civil protection organizations;

  2. (ii)

    finalized research activities carried out by scientific institutions, funded by civil protection to provide results and products for general or specific purposes;

  3. (iii)

    advices regularly provided by permanent commissions or permanent consultants;

  4. (iv)

    advices on specific topics, provided by temporary commissions ad hoc established by civil protection organizations;

  5. (v)

    research activities developed in other frameworks and funded by other subjects (e.g., European projects), that achieve results of interest for civil protection organizations, especially when they are involved as end-users;

  6. (vi)

    free-standing research works, producing results of potential interest for civil protection without any direct involvement of civil protection organizations.

In Italy, the scientific community and the civil protection have been working together since the Friuli earthquake in 1976. Their formal relationship was then enshrined in law in 1992, when the (permanent) “Commission for the forecasting and prevention of major risks” (the so-called Commissione Grandi Rischi, Major Risks Commission) was established. It was and is the technical-scientific advisory body of the DPC for all civil protection activities aimed at forecasting and preventing various risk hypotheses.

The Civil Protection Code currently in force (Legislative Decree 1/2018), acknowledges the fundamental role that the scientific community plays in civil protection activities, as well as the need to better regulate this role in terms of responsibilities and their correct attribution.

The Code defines the following activities, through which the scientific community participates in the SNPC:

  1. (a)

    routine and operational activities, which include monitoring and surveillance of events, development of databases and any other activity providing products of immediate use for emergency management and risk forecasting and prevention;

  2. (b)

    experimental activities preparatory to those referred to in point (a), as well as science contributions and the synthesis of existing research with the same purpose;

  3. (c)

    targeted research preparatory to the development of products useful for risk management and the study of the related scenarios;

  4. (d)

    collaboration in the preparation of technical regulations of interest.

3 Competence centers for seismic risk and structural engineering problems

According to the Code, “Research bodies and institutes, consortia and university structures that own and make available knowledge and provide products resulting from research and innovation activities, which can be integrated in civil protection activities, can be identified as competence centers”. Competence Centers were introduced for the first time in the Italian SNPC in 2004 (Prime Minister’s Directive of 27/02/2004).

The Code also draws attention to the desirability of establishing networks of Competence Centers for the development of specific topics on integrated themes and in a multi-risk perspective. One of these networks is represented by the Italian Center for Research on Risk Reduction (CI3R; https://www.ci3r.it/en/home-english/).

The activities carried out by the centers are funded by DPC through agreements, according to general multiannual frameworks that establish the main lines of activity.

The interrelations between DPC and a Competence Center in the implementation of an agreement are in many cases multiple, and their effective management requires a unified overall vision. To this end, in many cases a joint committee is established, ensuring consistency in the management of all activities envisaged in the agreement. In addition, DPC officials take care of the finalization for civil protection uses of each activity/product developed, interacting directly with the researchers responsible for each activity of the Competence Center.

Focusing on earthquakes, as well as on some related cascading effects, the Competence Centers concerned with the seismic risk are:

  • INGV (https://www.ingv.it/), the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (seismic monitoring and surveillance, seismological databases);

  • ReLUIS (https://www.reluis.it), the National Network of University Laboratories of Seismic and Structural Engineering (vulnerability and exposure analyses, seismic risk models, earthquake and structural engineering);

  • EUCENTRE (https://www.eucentre.it), the European Center for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering (vulnerability, exposure and seismic risk web platforms, earthquake and structural engineering);

  • CNR (https://www.cnr.it), the National Research Council (microzonation, landslides surveys, satellite interferometry);

  • ISPRA (https://www.isprambiente.gov.it/en), the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (geological mapping, 3D geological models, induced geological effects);

  • ASI (https://www.asi.it/), the Italian Space Agency (satellite data provider).

Overall, they represent the scientific reference system on seismic risk for DPC and SNPC, having the most updated scientific knowledge in seismology, earthquake geology and earthquake and structural engineering and related matters. These scientific institutions have the capacity to produce significant progress in organized scientific information and to drive a strong research focus on civil protection products for risk forecasting and prevention. They also provide scientific-technical support in case of an emergency.

Most of them are represented in the Major Risks Commission and/or participate in the Civil Protection Operational Committee. In case of a destructive earthquake, they are present in the DiComaC and operate in the affected area, under the general coordination of DPC. For example, during the Central Italy earthquake emergency in 2016–17, coordinated within the DiComaC established in Rieti:

  • INGV was responsible for seismic monitoring and coordinated the geological field surveys concerning tectonic features;

  • ReLUIS contributed to the damage assessment, including schools, infrastructure, special constructions and cultural heritage;

  • EUCENTRE contributed to the damage assessment and supported the management of homeless and displaced people;

  • CNR coordinated the geological field surveys concerning seismic microzonation, and was responsible for the interferometric analysis of the ground deformation based on the satellite data provided by ASI;

  • ISPRA coordinated the geological field surveys concerning landslides, in particular those affecting roads and buildings.

4 Some relevant advances and results from earthquake and structural engineering science

In 2004, two Competence Centers, ReLUIS and EUCENTRE, were created under the impulse of DPC, to support civil protection activities related to seismic risk and structural engineering problems. Since then, multi-annual agreements have been stipulated to support their activities, without interruption so far.

These two centers, while dealing with similar topics, have quite different characteristics.

EUCENTRE is a foundation with operational headquarters endowed with a large laboratory of seismic and structural engineering and experimental equipment’s unique in Italy and beyond. It has an organizational structure with its own researchers and operators and manages well-integrated databases that it owns or with which it interoperates.

ReLUIS is an inter-university consortium that involves in its activities almost all the researchers from Italian universities dealing with seismic, structural and geotechnical engineering. Its ability to aggregate and coordinate allows it to carry out, through careful coordination, activities consistent with the needs of DPC to obtain high level scientific products that have gained wide acceptance in the competent scientific community.

For illustrative purpose, the attention is here focused on activities carried out by ReLUIS, some of which developed in coordination and collaboration with EUCENTRE or other Competence Centers. Indeed, ReLUIS was conceived as a hub of aggregation of all Italian academics who carry out research on earthquake and structural engineering with the aim of providing scientific products useful for civil protection.

As anticipated, Competence Centers operate in general within the framework of multi-annual agreements. In this framework, projects are agreed and co-financed by DPC, and scientific activities and products of civil protection interest are established. These projects are generally organized in work packages (WP) and tasks, focused on specific topics, with numerous research units involved under the coordination of one or more WP managers, who interact with one or more DPC referents. At the end of the agreement, scientific products of immediate or future use for civil protection purposes are expected. The activities and products of each WP are classified into a, b, c or d category, according to the classification criteria of the Civil Protection Code reported at the end of Sect. 2.

There are numerous coordination meetings with the participation of the DPC referents, aimed at both ensuring a homogeneous approach by the different research units, and complying with the timing provided for in the agreement. In the case that more Competence Centers, each within the framework of its own agreement, contribute to the achievement of the same scientific product, joint meetings are systematically organized for a more effective exchange of data and information and for better concerted joint actions.

To illustrate in more detail the working methods and the results deriving from the activities of Competence Centers, some of the activities carried out by ReLUIS, also in collaboration with or using scientific products provided by other Competence Centers, are considered as examples of good practices. In particular, it will be emphasized how the widest possible involvement of the scientific community with expertise in certain topics or with complementary skills and information is always sought to achieve the desired results.

4.1 Studies aimed at improving seismic risk assessment

Risk assessment at different scales is unanimously recognized as a fundamental step for an effective DRR policy. Indeed, understanding risk is the first priority of the Sendai Framework (SFDRR 2015), but it is also explicitly required by the European Union. In fact, Art. 6 (Risk management) of the Decision 1313/2013/EU, as amended in 2019 and 2021, states that, in order to promote an effective and coherent approach to disaster prevention and preparedness and to foster the exchange of best practices within the Union Civil Protection Mechanism, Member States shall further develop risk assessments at national or appropriate sub-national level and make available to the Commission a summary of the relevant elements of these assessments, focusing on key risks. Moreover, the availability of a framework for an effective DRM which includes a risk analysis is an enabling condition for an EU member State to access to some of the European Structural Funds (Regulation (EU) 2021/1060).

Even in the past, however, seismic risk assessments at national level were made in Italy and used to distribute funds for structural seismic prevention among Regions according to their seismic risk level (Dolce 2012; Dolce et al. 2021a, b), as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Distribution of funds of the National Seismic Prevention Program (2010–2016) among Regions, according to seismic risk studies (from Dolce et al. 2021a, b)

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The active involvement of the scientific community through Competence Centers and their collaborative interplay with DPC is evident in the activities for seismic risk studies and analyses and in the relevant results achieved for the National Risk Assessment in 2018 (NRA-2018; Dolce et al. 2021a, b). Indeed, embracing the requirement from the Civil Protection Code to perform risk assessment with a wide consensus of the scientific community, a new participatory methodology was developed where academic experts and researchers belonging to ReLUIS and EUCENTRE, under the coordination of DPC, contributed to the elaboration of the new seismic risk model for the whole residential building stock in Italy. A conceptual scheme of this approach is illustrated in Fig. 2.

This approach stems from the consideration that seismic risk models previously developed lead to significantly different results not only due to a scientifically justifiable variety of choices, but also, for instance, to the selection of different databases, the adoption of different metrics or the use of different calculation engines, along with other specific choices made in the various steps. Moreover, the impossibility of making comparisons between the results of the various models in the intermediate steps of the risk assessment process did not allow to identify what were the differences caused by different scientific choices, therefore due to irreducible epistemic uncertainties, and those due to other, fundamentally arbitrary choices.

Overcoming these differences required a new approach based on choices shared in advance among all the involved researchers regarding the basic data and assumptions, in particular the exposure data, the hazard model, the damage metric, the damage to impact conversion rules, and the rules to combine risk results obtained by different models (left column in Fig. 2).

It was then necessary to identify a single state of the art calculation engine for risk assessment, to be incorporated into an operational platform (the IRMA web-platform, Italian Risk Maps; Borzi et al. 2021b) that would allow a series of comparisons and result aggregations in the intermediate and final stages to be easily made by the various research groups (central column in Fig. 2).

In this way the scientifically justifiable differences would have been all concentrated in the different vulnerability/exposure models adopted or developed ad hoc. For the development of these models, it is essential to compare impact results with empirical damage data collected after past earthquakes. Therefore, the most complete and organized collection of these data (320,000 records from 9 Italian strong earthquakes since 1976) was made available through the Observed Damage Database DaDO (Dolce et al. 2019).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Conceptual scheme of the process leading to the seismic risk evaluation for the National Risk Assessment of 2018 (from Dolce et al. 2021a, b)

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Six research groups (5 from ReLUIS and 1 from EUCENTRE) participated with about 30 researchers, proposing different Vulnerability/Exposure Models (VEM1, VEM2, … in Fig. 2), four relevant to masonry buildings and two to reinforced concrete buildings. The approaches adopted to derive such models range from empirical (Rosti et al. 2021a, b; Zuccaro et al. 2021), to analytical (Borzi et al. 2021a; Donà et al. 2021), to hybrid heuristic (Lagomarsino et al. 2021).

The process of model calibration and result validation was facilitated by the availability and easy consultation of the damage data from past earthquakes in the DaDO platform. A fundamental role for the entire process was played by the IRMA web-platform. This was purposely developed by EUCENTRE to make it possible to align the calculation approaches, to compare intermediate results obtained by the different research units, to check the effect of fundamental assumptions as well as to visualize results in a GIS environment. IRMA incorporated requirements defined both by DPC and the researchers involved in the process towards NRA-2018. It was employed to share and combine data, models and results, becoming a fundamental tool to get the final consensus model, as shown in Fig. 3. OpenQuake, the calculation engine developed by the Global Earthquake Model program (GEM; Pagani et al. 2014) is used in IRMA to produce conditional or unconditional damage and risk models and maps for each vulnerability/exposure model.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Use of the IRMA web-platform

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The seismic hazard model adopted all over the national territory within IRMA is MPS04 (Stucchi et al. 2004, 2011), developed by INGV in 2004 and incorporated in the National Technical Standards (NTC) since 2008, being the official national seismic hazard model.

Concerning vulnerability and exposure, the same fragility and exposure description rules were adopted for all the models, loaded and shared through IRMA. Finally, the same damage-impact conversion rules, based on the experience of past Italian earthquakes, allowing damage levels to be converted into relevant impact indicators, were established, ensuring the comparability of risk results in terms of direct economic losses, unusable buildings in the short (slight damage) and long (heavy damage or collapse) term, injured or deaths.

The final seismic risk model included in NRA-2018 was obtained through an appropriate aggregation of the risk outputs derived from the different vulnerability and exposure models (Dolce et al. 2021a, b). Some of the results are shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Unconditional risk maps in a time frame of 1 year. Average expected economic losses for each town (a) and region (b) (from Dolce et al. 2021a, b)

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Similar collaborative approaches were also adopted in three further projects, aimed at improving seismic risk assessment at national and local level: CARTIS was aimed at improving the information, and its granularity, on the structural characteristics of the building types in the different parts of the national territory; MARS was aimed at a general improvement of the risk assessment by further developing the approach adopted for the NRA-2018, also using the results of CARTIS; RINTC was aimed at producing risk evaluations from a different point of view, using a reliability based approach. Some details of these projects are given below.

CARTIS (CARatterizzazione TIpologico Strutturale, Typological Structural Characterization) involves and coordinates 32 research units from all over the national territory. It aims at getting more accurate descriptions of the Italian building types, both in quantitative and qualitative terms, in order to overcome the limited information on the structural characteristics of buildings in the national census and, therefore, improve vulnerability/exposure models used in risk assessment. CARTIS promotes the compilation of interview-based inventories at the municipality scale (Zuccaro et al. 2015, 2023). A suitable survey form, purposely developed within the project, allows information on relevant building typologies to be collected in each town. Such information, e.g., type of masonry structure, horizontal diaphragms, earthquake resistant systems, is much more detailed with respect to the data available from census and supports effective use of more refined vulnerability and exposure models.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Conceptual framework of CARTIS (see Zuccaro et al. 2023)

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The conceptual framework of CARTIS is illustrated in Fig. 5. It stems from the consideration that in each town there are homogeneous areas characterised by quite uniform characteristics of the building stock, due to the historical urban development. Each investigated town is therefore subdivided into Urban Sectors. In order to build a representative sample of towns at the national level, so that the information coming from the study can be statistically extended to the entire Italian building stock, the towns to be investigated were selected according to the percental distribution of Italian towns grouped in altimetric regions and demographic population classes. Until 2022, 421 Municipalities, 2307 Sectors, including a total of 734,641 buildings (Zuccaro et al. 2023) have been investigated with the CARTIS approach, and the data have been organised in a suitable web application that allows the involved research groups to progressively upload new data. Each research group is charged to investigate a certain number of towns, preferably in the same Region where they are based, but all the research groups have access to the entire database, to set up models and make vulnerability evaluations and comparisons.

Recently, a new version of the IRMA (V2) web-platform was set up, with several improvements with respect to the first version. One of them is the possibility to analyze separately different territorial areas, by applying to each of them specific vulnerability models, and then merging the results to get mosaic national risk maps. Therefore IRMA (V2) can also account for vulnerability models of local building types set up through CARTIS.

MARS (MAppe di Rischio Sismico, Seismic Risk Maps) is aimed at further developing the studies made for the NRA-2018, to get an updated seismic risk assessment. In detail, an updated vulnerability model has been developed, in order to improve the reliability of the results and the interpretation of the vulnerability model at national scale (Masi et al. 2021). In MARS, differently from NRA-2018, a unique consensus vulnerability model is defined by using sets of fragility curves associated to the six EMS vulnerability classes (European Macroseismic Scale; Grunthal 1998). Therefore, the final risk model is directly obtained without the need to combine risk results coming from different vulnerability models. 26 research units from universities spread over the national territory have been involved in MARS. To account for differences in modeling choices and vulnerability evaluation approach of the various research groups, the latter can assign the vulnerability to each building type, as defined according to the parameters available in the national census (age, number of stories, type o structure—masonry or reinforced concrete), through a linear combination of fragility curves associated to the EMS classes. Furthermore, attention has been paid to the calibration of suitable relationships between empirical damage and direct/indirect losses on residential buildings. In particular, repair costs and population assistance costs (normalized with respect to the reference unit cost of a new building) have been calibrated on the basis of actual quantitative data coming from L’Aquila 2009 post-earthquake reconstruction process (Di Ludovico et al. 2022; Fig. 6).

Fig. 6
figure 6

Data from the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake used to evaluate the indirect costs of population assistance (from Di Ludovico et al. 2022)

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A further advancement in MARS entails the possibility to perform risk assessment of some types of special buildings (portfolio analysis), thanks to the availability of structural information on any single georeferenced building (e.g., school buildings, churches): to this end, specific platforms within IRMA have been developed (IRMA schools; IRMA churches), which adopt the same vulnerability metrics based on the EMS vulnerability classes (Masi et al. 2021).

Fig. 7
figure 7

Selected sites for the RINTC project and relevant 475 yrs. return period response spectra (RINTC WORKGROUP 2018)

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RINTC (Rischio Implicito delle strutture progettate secondo le NTC, Implicit Risk of structures designed according to the Italian National Standards) is aimed at evaluating the implicit seismic risk of structures designed according to the Italian National Technical Standards NTC (Workgroup 2018; Iervolino and Dolce 2018). The project started in 2015, involving 12 research units and approximately 60 researchers. Several structural typologies, namely unreinforced masonry, cast-in-place, precast and base-isolated reinforced concrete, and steel buildings have been investigated. Research units with specific expertise in seismic design, modeling and analysis of these typologies were involved in the project, from different universities across Italy. Depending on the structural typology, different geometrical configurations were selected, representative of the national building stock. Multiple sites across the country were chosen, with different seismic hazard, in order to investigate the possible dependence of seismic risk on hazard level (Fig. 7). Case-study structures were designed according to the provisions of the National Standards NTC, nonlinear structural models were built following state-of-the-art approaches, and three-dimensional nonlinear incremental dynamic analyses were performed with properly selected sets of accelerograms. The goal of the project was the evaluation of the seismic risk implied by a code-conforming design. Such risk, however, was not calculated with reference to code-based, conventional—and generally conservative—Limit States, rather with reference to performance conditions closer to the “true” seismic response, corresponding to (i) use interruption for repair and (ii) complete loss of structural integrity. Then, based on nonlinear dynamic analyses’ results and probabilistic seismic hazard analysis at the considered sites, the annual failure rates of the analyzed case-study structures at these performance conditions were obtained. The analysis of these rates and their trends with the main parameters of interest (e.g., the general increase in seismic risk with seismic hazard, i.e., the non-uniformity of risk across sites with different hazard; Fig. 8) allows drawing very interesting observations regarding the effectiveness of currently adopted approaches to seismic design, and can represent a basis for future developments oriented to risk-targeted design.

Fig. 8
figure 8

Annual failure rates of buildings of different types and in different hazard sites according to RINTC results (Workgroup 2018)

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Subsequently, the RINTC project has focused on different further tasks, including soil-structure interaction, bridges, and extending the analyses previously performed on new structures, designed according to NTC, to existing structures, designed for gravity loads only or for seismic loads according to older standards (Iervolino et al. 2019). Regarding the latter topic, project’s results allow observing the progressive decrease in seismic risk with the age of construction, thus providing very interesting insights into the influence of the evolution of seismic codes on seismic reliability.

4.2 Studies aimed at improving structural prevention interventions for DRR

Recent devastating earthquakes in 2009, 2012 and 2016–17 in Italy (Dolce and Bucci 2017; Bucci et al. 2021) pointed out the high vulnerability of existing public and residential buildings and the urgent need to undertake strengthening interventions at national scale as a seismic risk mitigation strategy. This more and more increased the attention of the Civil Protection Department, and then of the engineering Competence Centers, towards the study of new techniques and technologies to improve the effectiveness of strengthening interventions, also taking into account further needs recently raised, coming from the European and national legislation.

Some background information is herein provided in order to understand the reasons and the setting of a project with this aim.

In the aftermath of the L’Aquila earthquake in 2009, as well as of the following 2012 and 2016–17 Italian earthquakes, one of the main needs of DPC was the definition of effective strategies and techniques to quickly repair and strengthen the several school buildings with minor structural damage (Di Ludovico et al. 2017a), thus allowing children to come back to schools as soon as possible. This was deemed as strategic in order to allow people to return to their social and economic activities and, then, avoid depopulation of the epicentral areas and towns. Innovative strengthening solutions were defined, disseminated through a purposely made handbook (Dolce and Manfredi 2011), largely adopted on the school building stock (Frascadore et al. 2015); the synergy between DPC, ReLUIS, the Public Works Office, and the involved municipalities and the province administration of L’Aquila allowed lightly damaged school buildings to be re-opened in few months after fast repair and strengthening interventions.

All mentioned earthquakes were followed by large reconstruction processes with application of various retrofit techniques (Dolce and Manfredi 2015; Di Ludovico et al. 2017b; Di Ludovico et al. 2017c). In this context, ReLUIS supported DPC to develop guidelines for practitioners, to support them in the design and application of seismic strengthening interventions, as well as in the definition of in-situ material characterization tests for existing buildings. This resulted in a fast transfer of the newest and most advanced strengthening solutions to the practice, promoting an effective reduction of the seismic vulnerability (Del Vecchio et al. 2014; Frascadore et al. 2015) and a faster recover of the affected communities.

These events provided also a unique opportunity to collect data on large-scale repair and retrofit costs (Dolce and Manfredi 2015; Di Ludovico 2017b, 2017c) that turned out to be useful to set up the damage-impact conversion rules used for the risk assessment described in the previous paragraph. The analysed data also pointed out the significant consequences of recent Italian earthquakes in terms of direct and indirect economic losses. This remarked the need to develop seismic strengthening strategies and techniques aimed at both enhancing the seismic safety of the structural system and reducing the damage to non-structural components to increase the resilience of communities in seismic prone areas. This background was also used to calibrate the Italian seismic risk classification of constructions (Cosenza et al. 2018) approved by the High Council of Public Works. It establishes a seismic risk classification of buildings based on the expected consequences and allows the seismic risk class enhancement due to seismic strengthening interventions to be calculated. This is a useful tool to manage the financial incentives in terms of tax deduction (until 110% of the cost of intervention) established in Italy by the Budget law in 2017 and following updates, promoting the implementation of strengthening interventions at national scale. Similar incentives are available to increase the energy efficiency of existing buildings, in order to match the objectives of the EU Directive 2018/2002 (reduction of 32.5% in the energy use by 2030). The integration of energy and seismic incentives is recognized in the literature as a gap to be filled in the DRM related to earthquakes (SfDRM 2020; Bucci et al. 2021). However, due to many concurrent issues, such as difficulties in the design and high level of disruption due to structural works, most of these economic resources have been invested in improving the energy performance of building and the general decor, often omitting any structural or seismic strengthening.

Given this background, DPC and ReLUIS decided to devote a work package of the 2019–21 agreement to Fast and Integrated Retrofit Interventions, involving 42 research units and about 90 researchers. Novel design methodologies (Menna et al. 2021) and seismic strengthening from outside the building (Del Vecchio 2021) were proposed and applied to case study buildings (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9
figure 9

Real case study buildings (RC, Masonry and Steel) to quantify benefits, costs and time for implementation

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Guided design reports for practitioners were produced, including the quantification of retrofit costs and lead times, and made freely available on the ReLUIS website (www.reluis.it). Different retrofit solutions, which consider increasing level of seismic and energy performances, corresponding to increasing costs, time and the related level of disruption, were proposed for existing buildings with RC, masonry (Di Trapani 2020, Caprino et al. 2021, Manfredi et al. 2021, Menna et al. 2021, Miani et al. 2020, Smiroldo et al. 2021, Tartaglia et al. 2022) or steel structures (Fig. 10). Retrofit techniques, both classic (e.g., RC or steel jacketing) and innovative (i.e. composite materials, exterior exoskeleton, use of wood panels, base isolation), were considered along with parallel interventions for energy efficiency improvement. Further effort was dedicated to the development of life-cycle thinking methodologies to assess the overall benefits of the proposed solutions as well as their sustainability (Caterino and Cosenza 2018, Caruso et al. 2021, Giresini et al. 2021, Passoni et al. 2021, Clemett et al. 2022, Menna et al. 2022).

Fig. 10
figure 10

Retrofit solutions with different effectiveness, level of disruption and costs

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4.3 Studies aimed at improving technical standards

According to letter (d) of the list of the scientific activities for the SNPC mentioned at the end of Sect. 2, the final goals of research activities in earthquake and structural engineering include also advances in technical standards. Indeed, the implementation of these advances in professional practice leads to general improvements in seismic design and, ultimately, to an increase in seismic safety and then a reduction in seismic risk. In this respect, ReLUIS supported DPC with several pre-normative research activities, involving a very large number of research units, i.e., more than 100, focused on different topics, including specific structural typologies (masonry, reinforced concrete, steel, timber), innovative materials for existing buildings, nonstructural components, base isolation and energy dissipation, geotechnical engineering, and design seismic input.

Research on these topics started from the detailed analysis of current code provisions and the consequent identification of possible lacks or criticalities, but was also developed looking at the current international framework of technical standards—with specific reference to Eurocodes and their latest developments, aiming, when possible, at reaching consistency with such provisions or contributing to their improvement.

In particular, a special effort was devoted to provisions for seismic assessment and strengthening of existing structures, because of the major role played by these structures from a seismic risk perspective (due to the presence of a large part of the existing building stock made of non-conforming structures, designed for gravity loads only or for seismic loads according to older codes). Moreover, this topic is currently characterized by continuous, very significant research advances, that should be integrated in code provisions.

On the one side, research activities were aimed at improving provisions regarding seismic assessment, mainly including capacity models for structural elements and methods of analysis (especially, procedures for the implementation of nonlinear methods). These activities concerned mainly masonry and RC buildings. On the other side, attention was focused on provisions regarding seismic strengthening, including innovative materials, as well as base isolation and energy dissipation for buildings and bridges. Research on application procedure and mechanical properties of strengthening materials (e.g., Del Zoppo et al. 2019) and improvements in performance of strengthened elements were also supported by several experimental investigations. As for seismic isolation and energy dissipation, improvements to code provisions regarding testing procedures and acceptance criteria for the devices (Ponzo et al. 2019) and modeling, analysis methods, and safety verification procedures were proposed.

Particular attention was also paid to the “end users” of technical standards, in particular to practitioners. To this aim, research activities were carried out to analyze the reliability of commercial software for structural analysis of masonry buildings (Cattari and Magenes 2022; Dolce et al. 2022), and the consistency of the analyses performed with this software with code provisions (Fig. 11), finally leading to the proposal of specific Guidelines for masonry structures.

Fig. 11
figure 11

Qualifying aspects of commercial software for structural analysis of masonry buildings: a Modeling strategies for wall-to-wall connections in masonry buildings, b Procedure for conversion of pushover curve into an equivalent bilinear curve (Cattari and Magenes 2022)

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Finally, further research activities were dedicated to geotechnical engineering, to develop or improve simplified approaches to different issues such as site response analysis and liquefaction, slope stability, soil-structure interaction. Finally, design seismic inputs in epicentral areas have been addressed, investigating the exceedance of the design spectral input (Cito and Iervolino 2020) and the quantification of the vertical component in these areas.

4.4 Studies aimed at improving structural health monitoring

The need for high safety control of strategic structures, infrastructures and monumental heritage located in potentially sensitive areas has led the research community to deepen the studies for the development of advanced techniques for structural monitoring at different scales, from the territorial scale to the individual construction.

Pioneering activities only related to earthquake engineering have been carried out in Italy since the 90s directly by DPC, with the permanently monitored buildings of the Seismic Observatory of Structures (OSS; Dolce et al. 2015), in order to support emergency decision-making and promote research in this field. So far, OSS has collected and made publicly available a huge amount of records, especially obtained during recent strong earthquakes. During the 2016–17 Central Italy earthquake sequence, OSS provided a total of over 2500 record sets, relevant to 613 seismic events, of which 400 records were relevant to earthquake with Mw ≥ 5 and 100 with recorded PGA ≥ 0.05 g, thus feeding research activities carried out by ReLUIS with precious experimental data (Fig. 12).

Fig. 12
figure 12

- Geographical distribution of the monitoring systems of the Seismic Observatory of Structures (OSS) of the Italian Civil Protection Department

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In recent years, research activities have been aimed at developing effective and reliable technologies to acquire, manage, integrate and interpret structural performance data, and obtain as much information as possible at a minimum cost, reducing human intervention. Traditional monitoring techniques, in fact, are carried out with sporadic and limited procedures. Therefore, it is important to pursue the objective of integrating them with continuous monitoring systems that can be accessed remotely in real time and automated. This is possible, today, with the support of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) technologies that aim to continuously monitor the health of a construction, and then its level of safety.

The development of new technologies of SHM is growing and can count on the study of new solutions. The needed instruments have low costs, so that monitoring systems have now a low overall economic impact with respect to the construction value. One of the main issues related to the development of SHM technologies for civil works is that each construction has specific characteristics (material, structural typology, geometry, etc.) and the challenge is to make monitoring systems and relevant data interpretation methods adaptable to all categories of works of civil engineering.

The use of satellite data for deformation monitoring of the various phenomena that may affect built areas, or in general sensitive areas (e.g., subsidence, landslides, excavations, and so on), has had a considerable boost in recent years, due to the increasing number of satellites and the possibility of acquiring data with a high sampling frequency. This has included the possibility, in the general framework of satellite monitoring, to use it also in the civil engineering field. In particular, the technique known as multi-temporal Differential Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR; e.g., Lanari et al. 2004), based on the use of SAR images acquired by sensors located on satellites, has been studied in the context of the abovementioned collaboration.

The need to explore new efficient techniques and to fully exploit the SHM potential for civil protection aims, avoiding improper use of on-site monitoring and remote sensing techniques, has encouraged DPC to promote research in these fields within the DPC-ReLUIS agreement and to foster a collaboration between ReLUIS and CNR-IREA (Institute for electromagnetic sensing of the environment of the National Research Council - CNR), aimed at the use of innovative remote sensing techniques developed in the last decades, even in conjunction with other SHM techniques. More than 40 research units and 150 researchers have been involved in this field, most of whom have dealt with the issue of remote sensing by satellite interferometry with insights on how to optimize its use for civil engineering problems. This is the aspect of greater interest for the purpose of the present paper, on which this paragraph focuses.

Given the frequency of the passage of a satellite on a given area (the so-called revisit time, variable from a few days to a few weeks, depending on the constellation of satellites used and the time interval analyzed), the effects of slow-onset phenomena can be grasped, if they are accompanied by movements that develop in a time scale of months or years. One of the most important advantages of the DInSAR technique is that it does not need the presence of ground instrumentation for the deformation detection, although the presence of on-site measures can improve the quality and the reliability of DInSAR products. Moreover, it is possible to investigate also time series in continuous, regardless of weather conditions, and prior to the current date. This can also provide information on seasonal or otherwise cyclical trends that in many cases may affect structures.

The advantages deriving from the availability of deformation data and mean displacement velocity are greatly evident for large urban areas: this technique allows to create deformation maps (in terms of displacements or mean displacement velocity), with a temporal continuity, in which buildings or infrastructure most affected by displacement are detected over large areas. Once defined the ranges of its applicability and the related limits, this could be a new valuable tool for prevention and control at disposal of institutions responsible for buildings and infrastructure control functions, particularly useful, for example, in the case of large infrastructure that are not directly accessible. The obtained deformation maps could be a pre-requisite to place under on-site observation the most critical constructions. To make a significant test field of the satellite remote sensing monitoring technique for the structural monitoring at territorial or single construction scale, CNR-IREA, in a substantial collaboration with the engineering community of ReLUIS under the coordination of DPC, processed satellite images acquired by the COSMO-Skymed satellite constellation and provided a great dataset of measures over the case study area of the municipality of Rome (Italy) for the period 2011–2019, contributing to the correct interpretation of these data.

The most advanced level of the remote sensing data is related to the structural health assessment and/or monitoring of single building/infrastructure, based on the elaborated DInSAR measurements. In the framework of the collaboration among DPC, ReLUIS and CNR-IREA, different works have analyzed the effects on structures or infrastructures of the deformations induced by different hazard sources and potentially monitorable with DInSAR technique (among others, Di Carlo et al. 2021, Ponzo et al. 2021, Delo et al. 2022, Miano et al. 2022, Talledo et al. 2022).

At the moment, the potentialities of satellite interferometric techniques seem of sure interest, and indeed they have been already used in some practical problems, although not always appropriately. For this reason, this research activity is aimed at producing “Guidelines for the use of interferometric satellite data for the interpretation of the structural behavior of constructions”, whose first preliminary draft in Italian has been released (Fig. 13).

Fig. 13
figure 13

Differential SAR Interferometry (DInSAR) elaborations of a the whole metropolitan area of Rome, b the buildings of a district of Rome

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In addition to the multitemporal DInSAR techniques that can be used for the monitoring of surface deformation phenomena, a further possibility is offered by satellite remote sensing techniques that concern change detection measures (optical imagery), which aim to monitor spatial variations in the relationships between buildings, structures and land. A possible development of research considers the possibility of integrating such techniques with interferometric ones, in order to combine useable complementary data for a better understanding of the structural behavior of buildings.

The possibility of integrating satellite data with data directly obtained from on-site monitoring systems opens new scenarios for a more effective management of critical situations due to anthropogenic and/or natural phenomena.

5 Lessons learned and future perspectives

As seen in the previous sections, the complex interaction between science and civil protection, if properly managed, can lead to important synergies and mutual benefits for both parties. In this paper, this relationship is mainly explored in the field of earthquake and structural engineering, but the considerations that follow are more general.

Scientific advances can enable more effective civil protection decisions and actions, even if they can sometimes lead to critical issues for the civil protection system, which has to readjust accordingly its activities and operational procedures. The scientific community, in turn, can take advantage of a broader and different finalization of its research perspectives, a clearer focus on the possible applications and their positive social implications, without losing its capability to make a qualified scientific production (e.g., researchers operating for ReLUIS have published more than one thousand scientific papers on the topics dealt with in the 2019–2021 DPC-ReLUIS agreement). Managing this complex interaction, however, can present criticalities and pitfalls. One modality that has shown capability in fostering positive interactions between civil protection decision-makers and scientific community is given by the so-called ‘hybrid experts’ (Dolce and Di Bucci 2022).

Hybrid experts are civil servants with a sound experience in both science and public administration. Therefore, they are able to understand the themes and to use the language of both fields. Their work can contribute to a considerable increase in the overall knowledge of scientists and decision-makers towards a better DRM. Indeed, their expertise is recognised by the two communities, and they can therefore act as an interface, because they are able to establish a connection between the demands, expectations and timeframes (often short) of decision-makers, and the data, information, uncertainties and timeframes (longer) of scientists.

Hybrid experts have been working in the Italian civil protection for a long time. Over the years, they have also held top positions in the civil protection system (up to the position of minister), being involved in scientific groups and projects, and supervising scientific activities financed by DPC and carried out by the Competence Centers. Among the hybrid experts there have been also skilled scientists who have collaborated for a long time with civil protection and who, at some point, took on a management role within it, which is the case of the author of this paper. These hybrid experts foster collaboration between civil protection decision-makers and national and international scientific institutions (Competence Centers, Major Risks Commission, EU Joint Research Center, partners in European projects, etc.).

Coming specifically to the subject of earthquakes, in the last four decades, the main advantages of the interplay between civil protection and earthquake science in Italy have been a general increase in the interest of the scientific community towards seismology and earthquake engineering, and an overall improvement in the quantity and scientific quality of research in these areas.

Some of the most significant results achieved in recent years include (Dolce and Di Bucci 2017):

  • better coordination between research units and groups;

  • better organised scientific activities for civil protection objectives;

  • ready-to-use outputs (e.g., tools for risk analysis, databases in a WEB-GIS environment, guidelines);

  • significant growth in experimental work, data exchange and inter-group comparisons, as well as the reaching of consensus on the findings for decision-making use;

  • collaboration on dissemination activities to raise risk awareness in the population;

  • a better designed advice from the standing and special committees.

It is important to recognise that important progress has been achieved. However, there are still some general aspects to improve in these applied research activities. On the one hand, the development of products in relation to civil protection needs is not always adequate, on the other hand, little effort is sometimes devoted to analysing the reason for inconsistencies in results between different groups. Further strengthening cooperation and knowledge of the civil protection system by the scientific community could help to further improve collaboration.

6 Conclusion

A close interaction between science and civil protection is considered fundamental for the Disaster Risk Management, at both international and European level. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction places “Understanding Risk” as the first among four priorities, which must be achieved with the best scientific knowledge, to make well-grounded decisions for the purpose of Disaster Risk Reduction. Moreover, the European Union is increasingly involving the scientific community in the decision-making process for Disaster Risk Reduction and civil protection matters, making an effort to build a science-based European Civil Protection system, where science is not only a reference for general policy decisions but also for operational issues.

In Italy, the collaboration between science and civil protection has been established by law since 1992, but almost 50 years have passed since such collaboration takes place regularly in practice.

The author, based on his own experience as a researcher and as a DPC director general, is well convinced of the need and opportunity for the scientific community and for the world of civil protection to cooperate and develop their capacity for interaction. They have to focus on those needs that are a priority for the society and implement highly synergistic relationships, which favour an optimized use of the usually limited resources available for the Disaster Risk Management.

In this paper, some positive examples of the Italian experience have been described with reference to the role and the activities of the earthquake and structural engineering scientific community to achieve civil protection objectives. The aim was not so much to provide an exhaustive picture of the activities carried out by the Italian Competence Centers on earthquake engineering, but to show the working methods that have led to scientific results timely and useful for civil protection purposes.

In particular, it was considered appropriate to make a focus on the activities of the RELUIS Competence Center, being a research hub on earthquake and structural engineering for civil protection purposes, capable of involving hundreds of research units from all Italian universities and operating in synergy with other Competence Centers, e.g., EUCENTRE, INGV, CNR in the examples given. The activities carried out by ReLUIS in the framework of the agreements with DPC has given rise to scientific products for civil protection based on the most up-to-date, and/or ad hoc developed knowledge, which derives from extensive collaborations and which, therefore, achieves a wide consensus in the scientific world, as required by the Italian Civil Protection Code.

The examples briefly described in this paper are relevant to: national and local assessments of seismic risk, strengthening interventions of buildings for structural prevention purposes and combined with energy efficiency improvement, studies to improve and update seismic standards, health monitoring of buildings and infrastructures, focusing on satellite interferometry. The background that determined the civil protection needs for each topic has been described. Moreover, particular attention has been devoted to the modality of collaboration and management of each project to comply with those needs, rather than to the description of the scientific results, which are the object of numerous specific papers published by the involved researchers.

The given examples could be considered good practices in the line of what is pursued at national and international level and then it is hoped that they could provide some suggestions and ideas to the national and international scientific and civil protection communities to make their collaboration more effective.