The Importance of Heritage Seismic Risk Maps in Drawing Up Disaster Risk Plans: The Case of Italian Churches

Growing concern for cultural heritage preservation has strengthened the commitment of the Italian Ministry of Culture and the Italian Civil Protection Department to risk analysis and management. Risk assessment, the first stage of this process, requires the identification of relevant hazards, estimation of their probability and intensity, and evaluation of the damage they may cause to exposed assets. Once asset-specific risks have been identified and quantified, priorities must be established for prevention, mitigation, preparedness, and emergency response. Seismic risk is particularly significant in Italy because of the country’s high seismicity and the exceptional extent of its architectural heritage. This narrative review examines the scientific and institutional developments required to produce national-scale seismic risk maps for cultural heritage, with particular attention to masonry churches. It discusses hazard, vulnerability, and exposure assessment; the Italian Risk Map and recent Civil Protection initiatives; rapid survey procedures based on macro elements and collapse mechanisms; and the use of vulnerability indices in territorial analyses. The paper also considers the limitations associated with incomplete and heterogeneous databases and with the partial representation of specific vulnerabilities in the conventional rapid procedure. An autonomous ANN-based procedure is examined as a rapid method for estimating the vulnerability index while considering both typical and specific vulnerabilities identified through visual inspection and other readily available information collected during the rapid assessment. It argues that seismic risk maps are essential decision-support tools for developing Disaster Risk Management plans, prioritizing investigations and mitigation measures, and shifting from a predominantly reactive approach towards preventive and adaptive risk governance.