Considering that vernacular architecture may bear important lessons on hazard mitigation, this chapter focuses on the European Mediterranean countries and studies traditional seismic-resistant architectural elements and techniques that local populations developed to prevent or repair earthquake damage. This area was selected as a case study because, as a highly seismic region, it has suffered the effect of many earthquakes along the history and, thus, regions within this area are prone to have developed a Local Seismic Culture. After reviewing seismic resistant construction concepts, a wide range of traditional construction solutions that, in many cases, have shown to improve the seismic performance of vernacular constructions of these regions is presented, as a contribution to the general overview of retrofitting building systems provided in this book. The main motivation is that most of these techniques can be successfully applied to preserve and to retrofit surviving examples without prejudice for their identity.

A new versatile and geometrically reconfigurable ultrasonic tomography system (UTS) has been designed to inspect and obtain information about the internal structure and inner damage of columns in heritage buildings. This nondestructive system is considered innovative because it aims to overcome common limitations of existing systems. Tomographic inspections are typically carried out manually and are thus limited to small portions of construction elements. The proposed UTS allows the automatization of the inspection and the generation of numerous tomographic slices along the height of the column. It is valid for multiple types of columns and materials. In the present work, the system was tested on two limestone columns of the north façade of the Convent of Carmo in Lisbon, Portugal. The UTS is composed of a mechanical and an electronic system. The mechanical system consists of four linear motion subsystems mounted in a square setup. A transducer is placed on each of the axes, acting as emitter or receiver of the ultrasonic signals. The mechanical system also includes a guide system to adapt the inspections to the complex geometry of the columns. The electronic system allows the control and the synchronization of the movements and the emission/reception configuration of the four ultrasonic transducers.

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Vila Real de Santo António is located in the Algarve region and was erected ex novo at the end of the 18 th Century, after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, following a Pombaline development that showed seismic concern at an urban and architectural level. However, most of the original constructions have been subjected to continuous alterations or even substituted for new ones. The first building built in the town was the Alfândega or Customs House and was selected as a case study because it still preserves most of its original characteristics. It was studied through historical survey, visual inspection and experimental in-situ characterization. As a result, a detailed finite element model was constructed and pushover analyses were carried out to assess its seismic vulnerability. The main goals of the paper are to understand the resisting mechanisms and seismic behavior of the building, as well as to evaluate the influence of structural alterations.

This paper presents the numerical seismic analysis of isolated vernacular buildings characteristic of the Alentejo region, which is considered a medium seismic hazard region in Portugal. A representative isolated building was selected from a database, and a geometric model was defined for the numerical pushover analysis. Subsequently, a parametric analysis was carried out to assess the influence of distinct parameters on the seismic behaviour of such buildings.