Cultural heritage and earthquakes: bridging the gap between geophysics, archaeoseismology and engineering

Historical sites, monuments and constructions of architectural importance are part of the world’s cultural heritage (CH) and are of unquestionable value for our society. UNESCO recommendations foresee preserving cultural and natural sites of “outstanding universal value” as heritage of humanity for present and future generations. As with every element in the built environment, cultural heritage sites are particularly vulnerable to extreme natural events such as earthquakes and their associated secondary effects (e.g. landslides, ground failures, tsunamis). Recent earthquakes in Italy, Turkey and Greece (e.g. Umbria-Marche 1997, Izmit and Duzce 1999, Central Italy 2016, Kos 2017) caused the loss of invaluable historical assets and have emphasized the increased need for targeted mitigation actions to preserve the vast cultural and historic heritage from natural disasters. It is well known, however, that targeted measures are not sufficient, unless they are coordinated into common disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies, capable of harmonizing the contributions from a spectrum of professional profiles.