Abstract 

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To study the impacts of disasters on the BE, the characterisation of the urban environment needs to be simplified into parameters that should be handled and modified depending on different contexts. According to this purpose, the current deliverable sets out to systematise the whole parameters, which influence the disaster response and allows providing criteria for evaluating the performance of the Built Environment (BE) in emergency conditions, that is defined in other terms as the resilience of an urban system. The final focus is the definition of "Built Environment Typologies (BETs)" as essential components of the BE composed by the smallest amount of morphological, geometric, and constructive characteristics that summarise the whole relevant physical aspects influencing the response to both SUODs (WP1) and SLODs (WP2).

The selection of the parameters composing BETs has been carried out based on the knowledge acquired from WP1 (SUODs) and WP2 (SLODs). This step relies on the experts’ judgment that allows selecting physical parameters that characterise the OS (Open Space) in morphological, geometrical, and constructive terms (characterisation of the BE provided by D1.1.1, D1.1.2, and D2.1.2), and, at the same time, play a key role in determining risks (considering the results of the D2.2.5 Annex).

 

After selecting parameters for BETs, a statistical analysis of a set of 133 squares of the main Italian cities has been carried out for gathering information to assign numerical values to the selected parameters. This step ensures the reliability of BET models obtained given that they contain characteristics that are both relevant to SUOD/SLOD risks and prevalent among the main cities of the entire Italian territory. The nine selected parameters, which univocally describe both AS (Areal Space) and LS (Linear Space), have been characterised through the definition of threshold to distinguish different variation range (options) that have been alternatively chosen and combined for the definition of the BETs. The BETs are calculated according to the combinatorial process of the nine parameters and their three/two options. The final result consists of 768 different combinations (3×28=768). This great number of BETs requires a huge computational effort. Therefore, some representative “basic” BETs configurations are selected for further modeling and simulation steps of WP3. This work connects the broad state of art carried out in tasks 1 and 2 and the simulation procedure of task 3.

 

In conclusion, graphical 2D and 3D representation of six examples of the 768 BETs have been provided to visualise the characterisation of all the parameters. Moreover, a validation process has been performed through the application of this procedure to real case studies, which have been studied in the WP1 (Caldarola, San Gemini, San Giovanni in Persiceto) and WP2 (Milano – Città Studi).