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Hazard Evaluation in Valparaíso: the MAR VASTO Project

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Abstract

The Project “MAR VASTO” (Risk Management in Valparaíso/Manejo de Riesgos en Valparaíso), funded by BID/IADB (Banco InterAmericano de Desarrollo/InterAmerican Development Bank), has been managed by ENEA, with an Italian/Chilean joined partnership and the support of local institutions. Valparaíso tells the never-ending story of a tight interaction between society and environment and the city has been declared a Patrimony of Humanity by UNESCO since 2003. The main goals of the project have been to evaluate in the Valparaíso urban area the impact of main hazards (earthquake, tsunami, fire, and landslide), defining scenarios and maps on a geo-referenced GIS database. In particular, for earthquake hazard assessment the realistic modelling of ground motion is a very important base of knowledge for the preparation of groundshaking scenarios which serve as a valid and economic tool to be fruitfully used by civil engineers, supplying a particularly powerful tool for the prevention aspects of Civil Defense. When numerical modelling is successfully compared with records (as in the case of the Valparaíso, 1985 earthquake), the resulting synthetic seismograms permit the generation of groundshaking maps, based upon a set of possible scenario earthquakes. Where no recordings are available for the scenario event, synthetic signals can be used to estimate ground motion without having to wait for a strong earthquake to occur (pre-disaster microzonation). For the tsunami hazard, the available reports, [e.g., SHOA (1999) Carta de Inundacion por Tsunami para la bahia de Valparaíso, Chile, http://www.shoa.cl/servicios/citsu/citsu.php], have been used as the reference documents for the hazard assessment for the Valparaíso site. The deep and detailed studies already carried out by SHOA have been complemented with (a) sets of parametric studies of the tsunamigenic potential of the 1985 and 1906 scenario earthquakes; and (b) analytical modelling of tsunami waveforms for different scenarios, in order to provide a complementary dataset to be used for the tsunami hazard assessment at Valparaíso. In addition, other targeted activities have been carried out, such as architectonic/urban planning studies/vulnerability evaluation for a pilot building stock in a historic area and a vulnerability analysis for three monumental churches. In this paper, a general description of the work is given, taking into account the in situ work that drove the suggestion of guidelines for mitigation actions.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the contribution of the anonymous reviewers that helped us to more precisely define some critical points. In the framework of the “MAR VASTO” Project, many people need to be thanked; Italian team: Lorenza Bovio, Fabio Geremei, Francesco Immordino, Lorenzo Moretti, Augusto Screpanti and Edi Valpreda (ENEA); Claudio Alessandri, Marcello Balzani, Daniel Blersch, Paolo Ceccarelli, Daniel Chudak, Gianfranco Franz, Marco Miglioli, Enrico Milani, Gian Paolo Simonini and Antonio Tralli (University of Ferrara); Nieves Lopez Izquierdo (ENEA and University of Ferrara); Claudio Modena (University of Padua); Cristina La Mura, Giuliano Panza, Franco Vaccari and Elisa Zuccolo (ICTP/University of Trieste). Chilean partners: Rodolfo Saragoni H., Maximiliano Astroza I. and Thomas Sturm (Chile University of Santiago); Carlos Aguirre A., Luis Alvarez, Raul Galindo U., Marcela Hurtado S., Gilberto Leiva H. (Federico Santa Maria University of Valparaíso); Geocom Santiago (Osvaldo Neira F. and Marco Quevedo T.), which provided Laser-Scanner equipment and personnel. Furthermore, the support of Andres Enriquez, Dante Gutierrez and other SHOA (“Servicio Hidrográfico y Oceanográfico de la Armada de Chile”) researchers was wonderful. During the work in Valparaíso many local Organizations cooperated with the Italian team: Valparaíso Municipality: above all, Mauricio Gonzalez L., Cristian Palma V., Carolina Avalos A., Claudia Zuñiga J. (Valparaíso Municipality professionals at the time of “MAR VASTO”, which joined the Italian team also in the framework of some bursaries provided in Italy by the Istituto Italo-Latino Americano); Mayors of Valparaíso Aldo Cornejo and Jorge Castro, Vice-Mayor Omar Jara A.; other Valparaíso Municipality professionals, starting from Paulina Kaplan D., director of the “Oficina de Gestion Patrimonial”, with many others; Intendencia V Region Valparaíso: Intendente Ivan de la Maza, Karina Englander K., Juan Carlos Garcia P. de Arce and others; Church Authorities: Father Fernando Candia (San Francisco Church), Mons. Gonzalo Duarte García de Cortázar (Bishop of Valparaíso) and others; Other Chilean Institutions: the Ministry of Culture (“Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y Las Artes”); Ana Maria Icaza and Francisco Saavedra (Programa de Recuperacion y Desarrollo Urbano de Valparaíso-PRDUV); Guillermo De La Maza (OREMI, Civil Defense); Enzo Gagliardo L. (Head), Vicente Maggiolo O. and colleagues (“Bomba Italia”) of the Valparaíso (“Bomberos”) Firemen; the Bote Salvavidas personnel (Valparaíso Sea Rescue Corp); the Police (“Carabineros de Chile”); Nelson Morgado L. and many others of the Valparaíso Board of Architects; other Universities (“Pontificia U. Catolica de Valparaíso”, “U. de Valparaíso”, U. de Playa Ancha Valparaíso); Luis Enriquez, Javier Troncoso (“Gerencia Barrio Puerto”, the historic district of the City); “Junta de Vecinos” of the Cerro Cordillera; Chilean professionals: above all, Milagros Aguirre D., always very helpful and kind; Luis Bork V., Fabio Mezzano P., Octavio Pérez A., Alfonso Salinas, Francisco Silva I., Gunther Sührcke and many others; grateful thought for the great support to: the Italian Embassy in Santiago; Roberto Santilli, Maruzzella Giannini and other office workers of the Italian Trade Commission in Chile; Pablo Peragallo of the Valparaíso Italian Community. Last but not least, special thanks to Arcindo Santos and other professionals of BID/IADB (Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo/InterAmerican Development Bank). We used GMT software (Wessel and Smith, 1991) in the preparation of some figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ENEA (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), Bologna and Rome, Italy

    Maurizio Indirli & Claudio Puglisi

  2. Laboratory of Seismology and Infrasound, Institute and Observatory of Geophysics, Antananarivo, Madagascar

    Hoby Razafindrakoto

  3. ICTP (The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics), Trieste, Italy

    Hoby Razafindrakoto

  4. Department of Geosciences, University of Trieste, Via Weiss 4, 34127, Trieste, Italy

    Fabio Romanelli

  5. IUSS (University Institute for Higher Studies), University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Luca Lanzoni

  6. Department of Engineering, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Enrico Milani

  7. Department of Structural and Transportation Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Marco Munari

  8. Board of Architects of Chile, Valparaíso, Chile

    Sotero Apablaza

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  1. Maurizio Indirli
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Correspondence to Fabio Romanelli.

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Indirli, M., Razafindrakoto, H., Romanelli, F. et al. Hazard Evaluation in Valparaíso: the MAR VASTO Project. Pure Appl. Geophys. 168, 543–582 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-010-0164-3

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