A Rapid Survey Form for Users’ Exposure and Vulnerability Assessment in Risk-Prone Built Environments

The sustainable transition to resilient cities is linked to the evaluation of their citizens’ habits. Understanding the Built Environment (BE) use is fundamental to plan effective risk-mitigation strategies, and users’ features and behaviors deeply affect the way BEs are used. Recent studies are moving toward the definition of typological (idealized) scenarios—namely Built Environment Typologies (BETs)—for simulation-based analyses aimed at the assessment of real-life BEs safety and resilience. Rapid surveys are available to collect data on typological features and hazards/physical vulnerability factors, but not to adequately assess BEs users’ vulnerability and exposure to single/multi natural and human-related risks, and their spatiotemporal variability. Within this framework, this work aims at providing an expeditious survey form to quantify, collect and represent such data. The form is based on remote analyses for rapid evaluations of critical hourly/daily users-related conditions. Among BEs/BETs, the attention is here focused on squares, which represent meeting spaces par excellence and host main functions for communities. A real-world square (Piazza Duomo in Reggio Calabria, Italy) is selected for the form application because of its geomorphological and riskiness characterization in correlation with its previously defined BET type. Results are assessed through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) resuming daily trends according to the users’ age, position and familiarity with outdoor and indoor areas. Promoted in the BE S2ECURe Italian Research Project, the form can also support safety planners and local administrations in simulation-based assessment and risk-mitigation strategies development.