The new sismimur plan: Seismic urban planning in the region of Murcia (Spain) after the earthquake of May 11, 2011

© 2014 WIT Press. The Lorca earthquake of May 11, 2011, was a traumatic yet very instructive experience for the Region of Murcia. Despite its limited scale of only 5.1 Mw, the earthquake caused nine deaths and material damage valued at over 800 million Euros in a city of just 100,000 inhabitants. This catastrophic result has led the regional government to implement a new plan, SISMIMUR, to better foresee and manage future earthquakes. In a move to improve the response to earthquakes, the new plan will incorporate innovative approaches to seismic engineering, creating aftershock evaluation protocols for buildings and the implementation of urban planning to reduce seismic vulnerability in the territorial development of cities. In these fields, the government of the Region of Murcia has commissioned the Technical University of Cartagena to conduct an urban microzonation in the city of Lorca as a pilot project to incorporate its findings to the future plan SISMIMUR. This article summarizes the main advances achieved in this research project and their possible contributions to the SISMIMUR plan.