The Basilicata region (Southern Italy): a natural and ‘human-built’ open-air laboratory for manifold studies. Research trends over the last 24 years (1994–2017)

The Basilicata region (Southern Italy) is characterized by a peculiar environmental as well as biological, geological, and cultural heritage features that are evident in national and regional parks as well as places of monumental and archaeological relevance, including the Matera UNESCO Site. Basilicata hosts the highly studied Vulture volcanic complex and the largest hydrocarbon reservoir in continental Europe. Furthermore, the region falls among the Italian regions most prone to landslides and floods and it is located in a seismotectonic background responsible of strong earthquakes. Therefore, the territory of Basilicata can be considered an open-air laboratory, both natural and “human-built”. The laboratory, with its features, has attracted many scientists worldwide and over time. The researchers have focused their attention on manifold studies. That being stated, the article aims to analyse the outputs of the scientific investigations targeting the territory of Basilicata within the last 24 years (1994–2017) with a bibliometric approach. The Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index Expanded and the Social Sciences Citation Index were the two bibliographic databases considered. Once the pertinent articles were extracted from the two citation indexes, the authors analysed the publication trends, Web of Science categories, countries, and hot topics

Italian Inner Peripheral Areas: Earthquakes and Collaborative Experiences of Heritage Recovery

The internal Italian peripheral areas are characterized by a geomorphological conformation that exposes them to altimetric isolation and seismic hazard. In particular, this last has rarely been the direct cause of the depopulation; the frequent seismic events have, more often, exacerbated mainly socioeconomic causes. In some cases, the long-term effects of post-earthquake reconstruction interventions include interesting “resistance/resilience” dynamics. The paper reports the results of the preliminary phase of a research carried out on the case study of Aquilonia, in the pilot area “Upper Irpinia”, involved in the cohesion policy of the National Strategy of Internal Areas (SNAI). The main objective of the research is to highlight the processes, in terms of Heritage Community and Community Resilience, that seismic events, and postearthquake reconstruction policies, can trigger in Italian internal areas. The first results show that very often the modalities of reconstruction of the heritage destroyed and/or damaged by telluric events that do not take into account psychological and social aspects can affect in the long term the dynamics of communities. At the same time, those traumatic events can stimulate processes of rediscovery of material and immaterial heritage by the community and start cooperation actions towards the construction of Heritage Communities, the reduction of vulnerability components and Community Resilience

Patrimonio storico-architettonico e salvaguardia: analisi delle caratteristiche costruttive e dinamiche dei campanili delle chiese in Basilicata

Si esaminano gli esiti preliminari di un’attività di ricerca finalizzata alla conoscenza delle caratteristiche costruttive e dinamiche di una particolare tipologia di beni architettonici: i campanili delle chiese. Lo scopo è quello di fornire uno strumento utile all’identificazione di eventuali condizioni di rischio e, quindi, di potenziali priorità di interventi strutturali tesi alla salvaguardia dei monumenti. Il percorso metodologico che sarà seguito durante tutta l’attività è qui riportato e reso fruibile al lettore attraverso due casi studio che sono stati affrontati sinora: il campanile della Cattedrale di San Gerado di Potenza e quello della Chiesa di San Michele di Marsico Nuovo, sempre in provincia di Potenza. Partendo da un esame propedeutico della storia sismica di sito e dall’analisi contestuale dei danni registrati dai due siti presi in esame, l’articolo affronta l’analisi delle principali caratteristiche dinamiche dei campanili soffermandosi e confrontando i risultati ottenuti attraverso misure in sito di microtremori ed analisi dei modelli ad elementi finiti. Le valutazioni dinamiche di ordine strutturale sono state utili anche per effettuare considerazioni in merito ad eventuali fenomeni di risonanza terreno-campanile

Migration, housing & disaster: Risk reduction and creation in Southern Italy's Apennines

Outgoing migration flows can influence demand, availability, location and quality of housing in the areas from which they originate, through dynamics such as remittance transfer and investment, cultural change, demographic decline and loss of skilled work. These dynamics may have diverse implications on disaster risk, potentially affecting the occurrence or intensity of some hazardous events and determining the levels of exposure and vulnerability of people and assets. This paper retraces the evolution of the housing stock as a product of outmigration in San Mango sul Calore and Cavallerizzo di Cerzeto, two mountain villages in Italy’s Southern Apennines, in the decades preceding recent disasters. Over the second half of the 20th century, both municipalities witnessed intense outmigration, contributing to the expansion of their respective settlements’ housing stock and the abandonment of traditional land-use patterns and building practices. These processes shaped hazard exposure and disaster vulnerability of different people in each community, producing a diversity of risk reduction and risk creation outcomes. This paper analyses the context-specific migration trajectories and risk outcomes in the two study areas, framing them through the findings of the global literature on migration, development and DRR, to identify theoretical implications and operational approaches relevant to understanding and addressing migrationhousing- risk dynamics. Its insights can support risk reduction in places experiencing intense population outflows and related demographic and physical transformations