mapping Site Effects at national and REgioNAl scale (SERENA)

Projects

PRIN

Client: Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca

Total financing: € 671.287,00 Unit financing: € 62.456,41

Partners: CNR IRPI (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche – Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica, Perugia), CNR IGAG (Istituto di Geologia Ambientale e Geoingegneria), Università degli Studi di SIENA, Università degli Studi di CATANIA, Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale, Istituto Nazionale Geofisica e Vulcanologia

Project website: https://prinserena.igag.cnr.it/#/

01/05/2022 - 30/04/2025

Involved offices: Perugia

progetti-IRPI-Perugia-20260331-logoSerena1

Internal contact person: Ivan Marchesini

Email: ivan.marchesini@cnr.it

Internal contact person: Paola Reichenbach

Email: paola.reichenbach@cnr.it

Involved staff: Massimiliano Alvioli, Francesco Bucci, Michele Santangelo, Nunzia Monte

The PRIN SERENA project, Mapping seismic site effects at regional and national scale, aims to develop a multidisciplinary and multiscale procedure for mapping seismic site effects in Italy. The objective is to overcome the limitations of current hazard assessments, which are often referred to standard soil conditions, through the integration of geological, geomorphological, geophysical, and geotechnical data, numerical modelling, and empirical validation. Within this framework, the project considers three main categories of effects: seismo-stratigraphic amplification, topographic amplification, and earthquake-induced gravitational instabilities.

The methodological framework of the project is based on the definition of geomorpho-stratigraphic units, the GMSUs, obtained by combining landscape classification, lithostratigraphic information, geotechnical properties, and geophysical signals. These units provide the reference framework for the spatialisation of synthetic hazard indicators and their associated uncertainty, at scales relevant to land-use planning, risk management, and civil protection. The project is structured into seven work packages, respectively devoted to data management, geological and geomorphological classification, assessment of stratigraphic and topographic effects, earthquake-induced instabilities, empirical validation, and dissemination of results.

The results reported for Work Package 5 show a significant methodological advancement in the quantitative assessment of susceptibility to earthquake-induced landslides and rock falls. A first important outcome is the development of a new engineering geological map of Italy at the 1:100,000 scale, obtained through reclassification of the national geological map, together with the definition of a national geotechnical database based on more than 2,300 records derived from the scientific literature. This made it possible to produce spatialised maps of cohesion, friction angle, porosity, and uncertainty, to be used in physically based slope stability modelling.

For rotational and translational landslides, a probabilistic procedure was developed using the r.slope.stability model, calibrated through back analyses and comparisons with high-quality landslide inventories. Applications in Molise, and subsequently in Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Umbria, and Marche, show that the introduction of seismic input, expressed through PGA maps, leads to a widespread increase in the probability of instability, particularly under saturated hydrological conditions. For rock falls, the r.stone model was used to simulate block trajectories and runout, integrating the morphometric predisposition of source areas with the seismic forcing. Overall, the results confirm the possibility of developing quantitative, calibrated, and transferable procedures for estimating earthquake-induced susceptibility at regional and supra-regional scales.

Home » Progetti » mapping Site Effects at national and REgioNAl scale