Sensitivity of urban seismic damage predictions to input data detail

Exposition

Monitored Buildings

Currently, four buildings are monitored in Sanremo, chosen for their strategic role in emergency management and their representativeness of the local building stock (Cattari et al. 2024). The instrumentation of these structures is tailored to capture both ground motion and building response. Three hotels are each equipped with geophone sensors at their base to record the seismic input and MEMS capacitive accelerometers at the top to measure the structure's dynamic reaction. The town hall leverages a pre-existing Kinemetrics ETNA2 sensor at its foundation, originally part of the Civil Protection network, which has been supplemented with a new MEMS accelerometer at its top to complete the dual-sensor setup. All data recorded by these instruments is streamed in real-time to the North-Western Italy Seismic Network (RSNI), which is managed by the DISTAV Department of UniGe, thereby enhancing regional seismic monitoring and providing critical data for site-specific vulnerability assessments.

ISTAT versus IN SITU data

This layer shows the percentage error between ISTAT data and IN-SITU survey data for the number of residential buildings. The comparison is provided for three categories: total residential buildings, masonry residential buildings, and reinforced concrete residential buildings. A colour scale is used to represent the degree of discrepancy. Green areas signify an exact correspondence between ISTAT and IN-SITU data, while yellow indicates a slight error of up to 25%. Orange represents a moderate error (between 25% and 50%), and red highlights areas with a high error, where the difference is greater than 50%. In some cases, the discrepancy is high (especially for reinforced concrete buildings), but it is important to consider that the number of buildings is often very small for some census track (1 or 2 units).

CARTIS sectors

To achieve a more detailed characterization of the residential building stock, this study utilizes the CARTIS surveys (Zuccaro et al., 2015) conducted in the Municipality of Sanremo. Based on these surveys, the entire municipal area is subdivided into "sectors"—areas with similar construction characteristics. For each sector, detailed information on the local residential building stock is provided, including the Force Resisting Mechanism Material (FRMM); the Details and Maintenance (DM) level (High quality-HQD or Low quality-LQD); the Floor System (FS) type (Rigid-R, Flexible-F, or Vaults-V); and the Height Level (HL) (Low-rise 1–2, Mid-rise 3–5, or High-rise 6–7 stories). This data is then used to develop a tailor-made fragility curve for each sector that accounts for these prevalent local specificities.