The paper presents a systematical study on the main architectural features characterizing existing buildings in historical centres and influencing their vulnerability under seismic actions. In particular, the first step of the work reports a macro-classification of historical centres on regional scale, obtained through a combination of multisource data with different degree of detail, such as data from regional landscape plans; public datasets and web GIS; quick virtual inspection, etc.

After, the starting dataset has been enriched by means of other available urban-scale data, in particular, those derived from CARTIS (structural-typological characterization for urban compartments), the procedure proposed in Italy for an extensive classification at national scale of recurring building typologies in municipalities. Hence, all gathered data have been collected and processed in a proper georeferenced database, in order to analyze features, specific characters and their geographic distribution. Therefore, a new taxonomy has been defined through an abacus of the building typologies and their structural and morpho-typological features influencing seismic vulnerability. The result is a homogeneous macro-classification of historical centres finalized to estimate seismic vulnerability in a given area.

The above procedure has been applied on the case study of Puglia region, showing a GIS tool reporting the classification for Apulian historical centres and the proposed abacus for the recurring building typologies.