Integrated methodologies for seismic risk mitigation in Durrës (Albania) after the seismic event of November 26th, 2019

Albania, the small country in the western Balkan, is a disaster-prone country. It ranks as one of the countries in the world with the highest economic risk from natural hazards events. During the past several decades, in average, Albania has been hit by about one major geological event per year. The impact of disasters in Albania are significantly compounded by a relatively high degree of poverty, lack of infrastructure maintenance, unsafe building and land use practices, linked to rapid urbanization, exploitation of natural resources (overgrazing of pasture, overexploitation of forests and riverbeds, etc.) as well as some other consequences of the transition from a centralized to an open marked economy.

From a geological point of view, Albania is a young and very dynamic territory and is very vulnerable to the geological and hydro-geological hazards as: earthquakes, landslides, flooding, torrential rains, river erosion, coastal erosion and avalanches that cover almost the entire territory. Due to these conditions its average annual losses count for about 2.5% of its GDP.

The Durrës earthquakes of 2019 had a huge impact on the Albanian economy. The city of Durrës, Thumanë, Tirana, Vora, Shijak and their villages suffered considerable damage after the earthquakes of September 21^st, 2019 of Mw 5.4 and November 26^th, 2019 of Mw 6.2. The main event of the ^26th November caused the deaths of 51 persons and the damaging of hundreds of buildings. The degree of damages produced by these earthquakes has been, in some cases, significantly enhanced by the characteristics of the earthquake ground motion affected by the local subsurface soil structure and the quality of the constructions. The situations during and after the seismic events highlight the indispensable need of the seismic microzonation studies for the entire Albanian territory and emergency plans for the main cities of the country.

This paper shows the impact of the earthquake event on the housing market value by treating the data collected in the city of Durrës for the period December 2019 - September2020.

The main goal of the paper is to correlate the obtained results with the engineering-geological and geophysical conditions of the city of Durrёs and the seismic vulnerability of the building.

The findings of this study can be considered as a first step for in-depth studies aiming to calculate the impact of seismic risk and the change in the risk perception on the housing prices.