Abstract
Following the 2016 central Italy earthquakes, the high seismic vulnerability of existing buildings is once again at the center of the debate. Indeed, the majority of the Italian building stock (around 60%) was built before adopting the first seismic provisions (1974) and in a territory entirely characterized by medium to high levels of seismic hazard. On the other hand, the first provisions addressing thermal performance criteria were introduced in 1976 but with limited impact. A consistent reduction in energy consumption was further achieved in 1991, when even more buildings were erected. As a consequence, the Italian building stock is characterized by reduced seismic capacity and poor energy efficiency and, to optimize the available resources, combined retrofit interventions approaches are required. In this context, a synergic strategy for the seismic and energy retrofit of a unreinforced masonry (URM) building was proposed. The former Courthouse in Fabriano (Ancona, Marche), a strategic, three-story, unreinforced masonry building in the network of permanent monitoring systems of the Italian Department of Civil Protection, was selected as a case study. The overall effectiveness of various solutions of combined structural refurbishment and energy retrofit interventions, having different levels of invasiveness on the building, was assessed. In addition, a common methodology based on the expected annual losses allowed evaluating the financial feasibility of the proposed integrated interventions and estimating the changes in the return of the retrofitting investment in various seismic and climate zones. The results also show how the payback period could be significantly reduced by incentives and regulatory frameworks that currently favour the execution of integrated interventions.
Highlights
According to ISTAT data (Italian National Institute of Statistic), 60% of the Italian building stock was built before the first seismic regulation (1974), and 88% of the built stock precedes the first important energy provision (1991)
The latest seismic events affecting Italian territory revealed that the poor seismic performance of masonry buildings resulted in high damage and losses
Economic Annual Loss (EAL) is based on the annual exceedance probability of the earthquake, and it may be used as index to assess the cost-effectiveness of retrofit interventions
Summary
EAL is based on the annual exceedance probability of the earthquake, and it may be used as index to assess the cost-effectiveness of retrofit interventions In this context, starting from a case-study, the aim of the paper is to propose a design methodology for combined interventions that implement both seismic and energy retrofit by intervening on the same scale of dimensions and structural elements of the building (vertical structures, horizontal structures, entire building) in order to optimize the intervention procedures and, if possible, reduce the building disruption time. The case study, the former courthouse in Fabriano (Ancona, Marche), has the typical seismic and energy vulnerabilities of masonry structures. The building load‐bearing masonry walls are mainly made of regularly cut stone
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