For the first time ever, a European political programme includes seismic vulnerability and hazard reduction among its top priorities – not just at a national scale, but at a European one. This, of course, is the vision of European Spring: the first ever transnational political list, launched by DiEM25, incorporates the seismic safety issue in the programme that it will take to the ballots of next spring’s European elections. The New Deal for Europe, says DiEM25 Italia NC member Paolo Della Ventura, includes “proposals through which we could change this Europe we dislike even tomorrow.”
So, while Salvini-Di Maio’s government decides to close “Italia Sicura” – the technical structure for renovating school buildings – and L’Aquila is once again facing the problem of school buildings safety, we set in our program what we call a kind of Marshall Plan for securing the territory, for public buildings as well as private ones.
European Spring proposes an Anti-seismic Plan to protect citizens and their communities from damage caused by earthquakes. The new plan will allocate funds for: (1) the classification of seismic hazard and the creation of a publicly accessible seismic hazard map, (2) the renovation of buildings having high levels of vulnerability and (3) the new construction of appropriate public buildings to anti-seismic standards.
The plan provides a detailed outline of how it will guide European seismic regulation:
- recognition and checking, in all member Countries, for the existence of the classification of the seismic zones and of the national seismic hazard map; the classification of the seismic zones for all the member Countries that have not yet implemented it, and its updating for all the Countries (as Italy) that already have it; the realisation of the seismic hazard map for the Countries that do not yet have it and its updating taking into account the historical trend of the last 10 years of seismic and geophysical data for the Countries (as Italy) that already have it; update of the European seismic hazard map, realized in 2013 with the SHARE project, on a five-year basis;
- obligation, in all member Countries, of publication (on institutional websites of owner Public Organization or anyway controlling and on the official websites of single structures) and data dissemination (for example: dedicated public databases, in open data mode) about the vulnerability index of all national public buildings, considered strategic and relevant, as well as of public interest (ex: shopping centers, stadiums and sports facilities); obligation, in all member Countries, to verify the seismic vulnerability, if it had not been carried out;
- obligation, in all member Countries, to carry out seismic adjustment of buildings with deficient vulnerability index, in relation to the aforementioned classification of seismic zones, to seismic micro-zonation and to the technical construction Standards of the individual member Countries;
- update, in all member Countries, of these technical Standards, in relation to the new regulatory obligations, referred to previous points;
- obligation, in all the member countries, of new construction of all strategic public buildings, with respect of these Standards.
Together, we believe, the details of the European Spring’s plan can guarantee safety to all European citizens;
Do you think we could improve our plan further? Help shape the European Spring programme at our.europeanspring.net.
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