L’Aquila anniversary highlights need for better buildings

Italy should prepare for the possibility of earthquakes larger than last year's disaster at L'Aquila and take steps to reinforce poorly constructed buildings. That's the conclusion of new research from the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research (ABUHRC) published to mark the first anniversary of the earthquake, which killed nearly 300 people in April 2009. The earthquake, which struck Italy's Abruzzo region on 6 April, led to the collapse of over 15,000 buildings, leaving 1,500 people injured and about 34,000 living in emergency shelters. It resulted in the highest death toll in the European Union since the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, also in Italy, and the highest economic loss due to seismic activity since the 1999 Athens earthquake. Researcher Dr Ioannis Papanikolaou, who is based at the ABUHRC, has studied what happened in L'Aquila and identified key ways to assist seismic hazard assessment, planning and recovery, including:     The L'Aquila earthquake was not a surprise - it occurred in an area characterised as having high seismic hazard based on traditional maps and historical record     The event ruptured a small segment of the fault system and not one of the major postglacial fault scarps in the area. This explains the minor primary surface ruptures which did not exceed 4km in length or 10cm in displacement. Other surrounding faults, however, can produce much stronger earthquakes that can generate primary surface ruptures of 15-20km long and maximum displacements exceeding 1m     Bedrock geology and basin effects played a decisive role in the damage pattern even at short distances.