Residential Building Models for Seismic Risk Assessment at the Historic Downtown of Mexico City

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent decades, seismic vulnerability studies in residential Historic Districts have increasingly resorted to simplified assessment methods, which, very often, are grounded on idealized models obtained from the analysis of the most recurring material and geometrical features in a specific area. This paper aims to discuss the procedure to get residential building models appropriate for simplified seismic vulnerability studies at Historic Downtown of Mexico City (HDMC). The models are built based on a comprehensive analysis from post-seismic reports, web-based inspections (i.e. 3D buildings in Google Earth and Street View 2017 panoramic), and existing literature in broad research domains – from history to urbanism, architecture, and conservation studies. From that analysis, it was obtained a set of building models organized into nine material classes (i.e. M1-M9), and four geometric categories (i.e. A, B, C, and D), whose matrix combination enables a final classification of 36 typologies. The neighbourhood of La Merced was selected as a pilot study area to obtain a typological matrix suitable to be applied to other areas of the HDMC.