National dataset of Italian structural aggregates
To support the activities of damage survey carried out on buildings after an earthquake, according to the operational indications issued on 12 February 2021, the Civil Protection Department realized this dataset, i.e. the digital cartography, of the structural aggregates present throughout Italy. Regions, Autonomous Provinces and the Revenue Agency collaborated in the project.
This is a highly detailed collection of data on the urban building situation in Italy, mainly created from the information contained in the geotopographic databases of the Italian Regions and Autonomous Provinces. In cases where the data were not available in a complete and updated form, the collection was integrated with the cartography of cadastral buildings. In addition, the structural aggregates are divided on the basis of the ISTAT administrative territorial unit boundaries, updated to 2021.
Therefore, unlike the original data on buildings, which are heterogeneous in terms of their origins and methods of production - also in terms of time and geographical reference systems - the final product of this project ensured a national standardisation of the informations and processing data.
The dataset is released under the Open CC-BY 4.0 licence for the open use of all interested parties and can be integrated with similar maps already released at local level, following the most important seismic events occurred, starting from the one that hit the province of L'Aquila in 2009. The dataset will be able to constitute
- a common cartographic base, on which to converge, during the management of an emergency, all the information related to the damage of the building heritage, including buildings of cultural interest (churches and palaces), subject to the protection of the Ministry of Culture;
- the reference database for managing the entire reconstruction process following an emergency;
- a very important tool for civil protection planning starting from the municipal level for: scenario analysis with related expeditious data collection of vulnerability; analysis of the Emergency Boundary Condition; civil protection sector planning (e.g. for the protection of cultural heritage). For this purpose, on this cartographic basis, the recognition of single buildings/structural units can be carried out as a second level investigation.
- a valid support for the AGITEC information system prepared by the Department for the management of damage survey activities for civil protection purposes.
- The cartographic data, subdivided by macro-regions, and the related metadata are already available for free use, via the GitHub platform, together with general information on the entire project. The data have been made available in shapefile format and require specific software (GIS) to be consulted. Here the links to access: