Seismic and solar performance of historical city. Urban form-based multicriteria analysis

The understanding of the global performance of a historical city is a complex balance of several specific issues and requires a multi-disciplinary approach to face with actual urban phenomena and challenges, such as the seismic risk and energy efficiency, that are strongly influenced by urban form. This paper focuses on the potential of urban metrics and typological indicators for describing the seismic vulnerability and the solar radiation availability of distinct urban textures, and the correlation between the two aspects. Comparative analysis at fabric scale was conducted on the historical centre of Rieti (Latium, Italy), to underline the main seismic and solar indicators. In the last decade, we witnessed the spreading of urban scale assessment and analysis tools, but seldom using an integrated approach to face the complexity of the historical city. Relying on morpho-typological indicators, the proposed method characterizes the fabrics in terms of seismic vulnerability and solar availability through a multicriteria analysis. The analysis reveals substantial differences between fabrics using three groups of indicators: Plan, Space and Analysis-oriented. Each group describes different features of the urban fabrics that affect seismic and solar performance and suggests improvement strategies. The purpose is to support policymaker and designer in the urban renovation process.