Towards a "behavioural design" approach for seismic risk reduction strategies of buildings and their environment

Earthquake safety paradigms in urban scenarios can be represented by the following: buildings response to ground shaking; possibility to evacuate urban areas; rescuers’ assistance to evacuating pedestrians after reaching assembly points in the urban fabric. The first element is widely investigated and involves studies on buildings vulnerability and site hazard. Last two issues are strongly influenced by urban scenarios modifications due to the earthquake and human behaviours during both event and evacuation. Consequently, understanding how people behave in similar conditions becomes an essential issue in order to properly evaluate the urban risk assessment, efficiently organize evacuation procedures and plan interventions (on critical buildings, infrastructures). Hence, this paper firstly offers an overview of current literature on human behaviour in earthquake so far as urban scenario safety is concerned. Critical factors that determine individuals’ response performances focus on human behaviours and environmental modifications due to the earthquake. The study underlines how some of the assumptions about the existing paradigms seem to be not consistent with the knowledge set out in the literature: individuals’ behaviours are generally neglected while proposing risk-reduction strategies (management, interventions on buildings), and these strategies are supposed to directly induce correct emergency behaviours on people. On the contrary, a successful approach should combine traditional evaluations with innovative analyses on human behaviours and man–environment interactions in earthquake conditions: hence, this paper finally suggests a “behavioural design” approach. Following fire safety engineering criteria, simulation models would be used for evaluating the exposure parameter and check operative strategies for interferences reduction in emergency conditions.