Rapid assessment of seismic vulnerability of historic masonry structures through fragility curves approach and national database data

Abstract

The research focuses on shared built heritage, which forms one of the most vulnerable parts of the building stock in historic centres. To prevent severe damage to this building category and to aid decision-making, the paper presents a rapid seismic vulnerability assessment procedure based on an engineering approach to safety assessment. The construction of fragility curves is developed on a probabilistic framework on the computed set of Safety Factors over a range of considered Peak-Ground-Accelerations. Input data necessary for the computations are extracted from CARTIS database. The methodology is implemented in a spreadsheet combined with a script in Visual Basic for Applications. Two case studies are used to demonstrate the applicability to a single building and at the territorial scale. Results show that the proposed methodology allows for a rapid testing of loss of structural performance given various scenarios, as well as contributing by prioritizing interventions in probabilistic terms.