This PhD project aims to investigate the complex interactions between seismic events and urban damage, focusing on critical infrastructure failures and their impact on urban system functionality. The research focuses on understanding how earthquake-induced damage to power grids, triggering prolonged blackouts and cascading disruptions across essential urban services, can impact the urban metabolism. By integrating perspectives from social sciences, urban studies, and infrastructure engineering, the project seeks to analyse both the immediate and long-term consequences of such compound hazards on urban populations and the functioning of cities. Starting from historical earthquake events, records of power grid failures, urban infrastructure vulnerability data, and socio-demographic information from affected cities, an integrated model will be developed to simulate cascading failures across critical services and assess how these disruptions affect urban functionality and resilience. A set of indicators, encompassing environmental, infrastructural, and socio-cultural dimensions, will be defined to evaluate the functionality of the urban system and monitor its recovery trends over time.The generation of scenario-based analyses aims at identifying a system of essential urban functions whose preventive safety measures could reduce urban vulnerability and facilitate recovery.

The ideal candidate should have strong analytical and quantitative skills, with experience in urban systems modelling and disaster risk assessment. Proficiency in handling socio-demographic and geospatial data, as well as simulation of cascading failures, is essential. Interdisciplinary thinking, combining social science, urban studies, and technical engineering perspectives, is required, along with strong communication skills for translating complex analyses into actionable insights for policy and planning.

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The group is composed of 25 researchers, including postdocs and collaborators, who work together on a variety of topics related to seismic risk and multi-risk. The research environment is young and dynamic, fostering collaboration, innovation, and the development of new ideas across different areas of expertise. The first is the LAB GIS, which focuses on GIS technologies, and GEALAB, a laboratory dedicated to applied geophysics. The research group also work in framework of inStabile where researchers collaborate to develop methodologies and tools for analysing the response capacity of urban settlements to disasters, both during the emergency phase and in the early stages of recovery.

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