Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering aspects: the 2012 Emilia-Romagna earthquake (Italy)

On May 20, 2012 an earthquake of magnitude ML=5.9 struck the Emilia Romagna Region of Italy and a little portion of Lombardia Region. Successive earthquakes occurred on May 29, 2012 with ML=5.8 and ML=5.3. The earthquakes caused 27 deaths, of which 13 on industrial buildings. The damage was considerable. 12,000 buildings were severely damaged; big damages occurred also to monuments and cultural heritage of Italy, causing the collapse of 147 campaniles. The damage is estimated in about 5-6 billions of euro. To the damage caused to people and buildings, must be summed the indirect damage due to loss of industrial production and to the impossibility to operate for several months. The indirect damage could be bigger than the direct damage caused by the earthquake. The resilience of the damaged cities to the damage to the industrial buildings and the lifelines was good enough, because some industries built a smart campus to start again to operate in less of one month and structural and geotechnical guidelines were edited to start with the recovering the damage industrial buildings. In the paper a damage survey is presented and linked with the ground effects. Among these, soil amplification and liquefaction phenomena are analyzed, basing on the soil properties evaluation by field and laboratory tests. Particular emphasis is devoted to the damaged suffered by the industrial buildings and to the aspects of the remedial work linked with the shallow foundation inadequacy and to the liquefaction mitigation effects.