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This paper describes the results achieved within the framework of the national research project Reduction of the Seismic Vulnerability of Infrastructural Systems and Physical Environment, sponsored by the GNDT (Italian National Group for Defense Against Earthquakes), which is a body of the INGV (Italian Geophysic and Volcanology National Institute). The project, which involved several Universities around Italy under the coordination of Prof. Michele Calvi of the University of Pavia, was carried out over three years and has been just completed in July 2004. The aim of the project was to study the problems related to the seismic vulnerability assessment both of the physical environment and the infrastructural systems, to develop new techniques and tools, or improve the existing ones, to provide an efficient reduction of the risk. One of the products of the project is the Web GIS, described in this paper, which has been applied to a test area in the South of Italy which in the past has suffered high seismic level events, to prove its efficiency and to examine the possibility of its implementation at national level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landslide map in the Serchio basin (Central Tuscany, Italy) is an official document that represent the actual state of the landslides in the region. At present, the updating of the map is carried out by different municipalities using paper sketch maps, sent by post to the Autorità di Bacino del Fiume Serchio (AdB). The objective of the work presented here was to significantly speed up and simplify this updating process, while taking into account the severe constraints of the municipalities. This was to be achieved by providing them with a lightweight Web based map application that allows inventory of new landslides and submitting them via the WWW directly to the AdB databases. Open Source technology and Open Standards were employed to build a database-driven application. The data is stored in a spatial database backend (MySQL), following OpenGIS Simple Features specifications. Server applications extract data from the database and deliver it as a client-side application in SVG, the Scalable Vector Graphics format of the W3C. This paper presents the technical background and setup of this application and plans for future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk assessment is a complex issue aiming at evaluation of different aspects of disaster damages. Traditionally, risk analysis relies on mathematical models to establish the likelihood of a given event occurring with a given degree of intensity in a given site. The major limitation of this type of approach is the fact that the field of risk necessarily entails uncertainty and it is not therefore always possible to make realistic hypotheses about possible future scenarios. Therefore, a new approach is required, that can take into account social, economic, cultural, and political aspects that are not generally considered in traditional assessment methods, but that serve to define the capacity of response of a territorial system to a disaster. In this paper we present a new approach, according to which the assessment process breaks down the principal goals into a hierarchy of lower level sub-goals. Each element of the hierarchy is assigned a local weight that evaluates the importance of that element not in overall terms (i.e. referred to the principal goal), but only in relation to the supra-ordinate element with which it is compared. The approach is tested in a case study estimating the risk of flooding in the Municipality of Monopoli, Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent study carried out by the French Civil protection with support of Italy and Spain, reviewed the current usage of new technologies for civil protection, in particular for rescue operations (Béquignon and Nardin 2004). The technologies considered here were Geographical Information Systems, GPS and other locating devices, telecommunications, satellite and airborne remote sensing. A number of challenges were identified for further development. The paper will provide some examples and discuss related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater and soil contamination by chlorinated hydrocarbons has recently become of increasing concern and extensive researches have been conducted to develop technologies for remediating both contaminated groundwaters and soils. In this framework in-situ technologies are promising for remediating contaminated groundwater in that they would keep the ecosystem largely undisturbed and would be cost effective. The aim of the present study is the assessment of natural attenuation potential at a TCE-contaminated site in Northern Italy. This site has a long history of contamination (approximately 50 years) mainly due to industrial activities. The study illustrates the steps involved in implementing natural or enhanced attenuation screening protocols at this site and represent an outstanding example of effective coupling of process analysis and modeling. In fact microcosm studies properly integrated with modeling results might suggest the feasibility for enhancing in-situ reductive dechlorination at the investigated site in order to achieve the stringent legislation limits. Such promising results will be verified through a field test performance before implementing the process at full-scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M3Flood (Monitoring, Managing, Mitigating) is born from the European project MUSHROOM. The aim of the project was to develop a software product and relative services which can provide a complete, integrated, modular and scalable support, interoperable with external tools and data, to the organizations responsible for managing flood emergencies. The two case studies (in Italy and Spain) have shown the strength of the systems in two directions: 1) applicability of the system in both phases risk forecasting and management and 2) flexibility of the system with respect to various components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]