Combining Structural and Non-structural Risk-reduction Measures to Improve Evacuation Safety in Historical Built Environments

Historical city centres are critical-built environments prone to earthquake risk because of the features of the complex network of Architectural Heritage, facing Open Spaces (OSs) and the users hosted by them. Structural measures, such as building retrofitting actions, and non-structural measures, like emergency and evacuation planning, could be jointly set up to improve the safety of the Historical Built Environments since they aim to face the effects of damage across the OSs and so on the users’ movement. This work adopts a simulation-based approach to assess the individual and combined efficiency of these structural and non-structural measures. Risk indices focused on the evacuation process are used to this end, considering the final effects on the users’ movement and safety. Results show how seismic retrofitting strategies could be located in critical “hot-spots” in the urban fabric to additionally support the evacuation plan, thus reducing implementation efforts for the stakeholders.