The Caucasus is a hinge between East and West; a looted border territory for centuries (from Persians to the Turks) and later, under the Soviet regime, it was invested by a violent russification. Despite these vicissitudes, many Caucasian regions managed to keep part of their traditions and their pride kept hidden over the years by necessity. Today the looting of the area continues in a different form. This time by the inhabitants themselves, as well as by foreign construction companies, with the connivance of the great international studies of architecture. In both cases, the reason is that running after the fast modernisation is easy. Tourism is the alibi. And the construction industry is the means.

The project SISMI-Tecnologie per il miglioramento della Sicurezza e la ricostruzione dei centri Storici in area sisMIca (technologies for the improvement of safety and the reconstruction of historic centres in the seismic area)–aims to provide tools and methods for risk reduction and seismic improvement of Lazio’s cultural assets and centres, causing research, intervention policies, and planning to interact in order to support reconstruction choices and foster dialogue with local parties and enterprises. One of the SISMI project’s main elements of innovation consists of preparing modes of integration of knowledge and assessments relating to the various components of a territory’s vulnerability and seismic hazard that can be used in other seismic territories. SISMI project, tested in seismic territories of Central Italy, is a methodology of integrated, multidimensional, and transdisciplinary investigation, in the conviction that the safety of the territory and of historic and cultural assets is the result of a dynamic risk reduction process capable of guaranteeing and promoting the local communities’ resilience, in which both physical/structural and sociocultural elements collaborate.