SEISMOCARE: An efficient GIS tool for scenario-type investigations of seismic risk of existing cities

The present paper summarises the development of a geographic information systems (GIS) scenario-based system, called SEISMOCARE, for the regional damage and loss estimation due to earthquakes. This system offers a high level of analysis sophistication and integrates state-of-the-art information processing tools relevant to hazard assessment, vulnerability estimation and seismic risk reduction. It enables end-users to perform ‘if–then’ scenarios to analyze the sensitivity of its estimations and to optimize the decisions for the planning process of existing cities and their future expansions. The end product of the present methodology and its supporting software could be used as a starting point to adopt it for different seismically active regions, although this step will require further work to focus on the specific problems of the particular areas.