The Damage Survey of Cultural Built Heritage Between Simplified Procedures and Needs for Implementation: the Case Study of Emilia-Romagna Cemeteries

Seven years after the earthquake occurred in Emilia-Romagna, the planning phases related to the cultural heritage reconstruction are coming to a conclusion. At this point, the Agency for reconstruction earthquake 2012 has launched an unprecedented process aimed at verifying, also through the recognition of the main critical issues, the simplified damage assessment procedures whose application has allowed an aware and sustainable management of the emergency. These procedures able to become practices in the ordinary management of the territory. The Guidelines for the evaluation and reduction of seismic risk on Cultural Heritage, and the Directive 12/12/2013 “Procedures for management of activities for cultural heritage securing and safeguarding in the event of emergencies caused by natural disasters” of MiBAC identify as first cognitive procedure the compilation of sheet to provide vulnerabilities and damage level representation on movable and immovable assets. In particular, they establish two important survey instruments: the A-Church and the B-Palaces sheets. These are the only two instruments used between 2012 and 2013 for the damage level characterization of the cultural heritage caused by the “Emilia 2012” earthquake. The widespread use of these sheets has brought to light several problems that have negatively affected the successive economic assessment of the intervention. In fact, if these sheets well describe the vulnerabilities of the specialized types Churches or Palaces, they are ill suited to types with different features, which, in the Emilia-Romagna case, represent about 30% of damage cultural heritage numerically and economically. In particular, concerning cemeteries, which constitute the most relevant sample in this set, the operator's difficulty in choosing the sheet type to use, A or B, has been underlined. Furthermore, the B model modification, lately introduced by MiBAC to simplify the procedure, has further aggravated the situation with the illogical consequence of having 7-8 sheets per single cemetery, regardless of its size. After the analysis of all sheets produced for the cemetery type after the 2012 earthquake, the need to implementation for the already consolidated procedures has become clear, in order to be able to manage the post-emergency phases on those types that, as cemeteries, represent an important part of the local cultural identity, but that are not addressed in existing tools.