Empirical vulnerability models are fundamental tools to assess the impact of future earthquakes on urban settlements and communities. Generally, they consist of sets of fragility curves that are derived from georeferenced post-earthquake damage data. Following the 2015 Nepal earthquake sequence, the World Bank, through the Global Program for Safer Schools, conducted a Structural Integrity and Damage Assessment (SIDA) of about 18,000 school buildings in the earthquake-affected area. In this work, the database is utilized to identify the main structural characteristics of the Nepalese school building stock. For the first time, extended SIDA school damage data is processed to derive fragility curves for the main structural typologies. Data sets for each structural typology are used for a Bayesian updating of existing fragilities to obtain regional models for Nepalese schools. These fragility estimates can be adopted to assess potential seismic losses of the school infrastructure in Nepal. Additionally, they can be used for calibrating loss assessment studies in the wider Himalayan region where the structural typologies are similar.

Historic timber structures forming vaulted roofs of public and ecclesiastical buildings are present worldwide. The structural response of these constructions is usually governed by the structural performance of the joints, the interaction between the timber structure and the masonry parts, and the current condition of both joints and timber members. At present, numerical approaches, such as finite element method-based approaches are well-established tools for investigating the global response of complex historic structures. Using a FE-based software package, the authors developed a numerical model of a portion of an existing historic vaulted timber structure, which is part of the roof of the Cathedral of Ica in Peru, considering the in-plane semi-rigid response of the planked arches in the elastic range. For this purpose, the rotational and shear stiffness of the joints and the properties of the materials, which are assumed in good conditions, are calibrated by comparing the numerical outputs with experimental results available in literature. The aim of the work presented here is to compare the response of the same vault assuming either continuous (planks continuously connected) or discontinuous arches (modelling of the semi-rigid response of the joints which connect the planks together).

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