## 1 Introduction  
The necessary forensic analysis after an earthquake to implement seismic mitigation strategies in cities is quite complex. To begin with, there are many variables and uncertainties that center around the evaluation process (number of victims, location and amount of damage, characteristics of the seismological phenomenon, presence of attenuating or amplifying local factors, influence of urban and building design, etc.) [1]. These variables tend to belong to different fields of knowledge, such as structural dynamics [2], earthquake engineering [3], geotechnics and geology [4], seismology [5], or even the urban configuration of cities [6]. On many occasions, this situation requires addressing clearly multidisciplinary problems, such as the forensic analysis of building damage levels resulting from the earthquake in the whole city, using approaches subjected to the limitations of each field of knowledge [7]. Some methodological perspectives are able to combine two or even three different disciplines in a single analysis to find possible correlations among them (soil-structure interaction [8], building design combined with seismology [9], building design combined with material resistance [10], building design combined with seismology and urban configuration [11], etc.). However, we can rarely find a post-earthquake forensic analysis capable of responding comprehensively to all of the effects observed in a city in the aftermath of an earthquake. In addition to this we must add the inherent difficulty in obtaining reliable forensic data in the field and in sufficient quantity to enable an analysis to be carried out with all of the guarantees. It is important to keep in mind that normally the highest priorities in the first hours and days after a seismic event consist of helping the victims, safeguarding the rest of the citizens, avoiding major damage from possible aftershocks, and starting the reorganization work as soon as possible to try to recover normality in the city [12]. This goes, to some extent, against the scientific interest in obtaining invaluable information that occurs during this period when we are able to analyze damage and its characteristics in order to implement optimal strategies to mitigate risks against future seismic events. One of the main difficulties that we find when developing truly effective strategies to mitigate seismic risks in cities is the need to prioritize the importance of the phenomena derived from an earthquake. On many occasions we find that the studies carried out on the effects of an earthquake in a city offer partial views on the measures to be adopted, since all of them tend to focus the problem within the exclusive scope of their scientific discipline (structure dynamics, foundation construction and geotechnics, geology, urban planning, seismology, etc.). This makes it rather difficult to implement balanced seismic mitigation strategies based on the post-earthquake knowledge in many studies that are carried out, because it is not possible to perform a priori evaluation objectively if the damage occurred in the buildings of a city is more so the consequence of poor structural design, an incorrect urban and architectural configuration, or the absence of foundations that take into account the seismic variable of soil geology. In this context, the implementation of a geostatistical approach could be very interesting for this field of research, since it allows the spatial statistical correlation between different factors that have no obvious theoretical relation to each other to be evaluated [13]. In a context in which previous studies have highlighted the influence of various heterogeneous variables to explain the origins and consequences of a seismic event, this methodological approach can prove to be of great interest to reliably assess and develop effective measures for a seismic mitigation strategy.