Earthquake Environmental Effects, intensity and seismic hazard assessment: the lesson of some recent large earthquakes

The dreadful scenarios of effects caused by the recent catastrophic seismic events in very different parts of the world (from Eastern Asia to Chile and Haiti) are renewing the longlasting global debate among seismologists, geologists and engineers about the best practices and tools to achieve the most complete and reliable seismic hazard assessment. In this note we focus on three recent events that have clearly demonstrated once more that the vibratory ground motion, although a serious source of direct damage, it is by no means the only parametr that should be considered, being most damages caused by the coseismic geological effects, either directly linked to the earthquake source or provoked by the ground shaking ("Earthquake Environmental Effects", EEE). Surface faulting, regional uplift and subsidence, tsunamis, liquefaction, ground resonance, landslides, ground failure, are indeed controlled or induced by the local geological setting.