On the 26th of November 2019, an earthquake of moment magnitude 6.4 struck the northwest region of Albania as the result of thrust faulting near the convergent boundary of the Africa and Eurasia plates causing widespread damage to buildings in the city of Durrës and the surrounding areas. Based on the official data from the national authorities, the earthquake caused 51 casualties and 985 million-euro losses, corresponding to 7.5% of the 2018 gross domestic product. This paper summarises field observations made by the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) after the event. The paper presents an overview of the seismological aspects of the earthquake together with a brief overview of the damage, official loss statistics and the estimated macro- and socio-economic consequences of the event. In addition, it provides a summary of the observed damage to both recent and historical buildings as well as the description of several case studies to illustrate the characteristic damage patterns observed in the main structural typologies of the Albanian building stock. These observations try to identify possible links between the observed damage patterns and the deficiencies in construction practice and use of inappropriate retrofit techniques for historical assets. As many severe damages were observed on modern buildings, this also allows the identification of some gaps and possible areas of development of the current seismic design code. In the end, the lessons learned from the field survey are resumed.

In November 2012 EEFIT launched its first ever return mission to an earthquake affected site. The L'Aquila Earthquake site was chosen as this is a recent European event of interest to the UK and European earthquake engineering community. The main aims of this return mission were to document the earthquake recovery process and this paper presents an overview of the post-disaster emergency phase and transition to reconstruction in the Aquila area after the earthquake. It takes an earthquake engineering perspective, highlighting areas mainly of interest to the fields of structural/seismic engineering and reconstruction management. Within the paper, reference is made to published literature, but also to data collected in the field during the return mission that would not otherwise have been available.

Malawi is an earthquake-prone country that lies within the East African Rift. A large proportion of its population lives in non-engineered single-storey constructions made of clay bricks and low-strength mortar. Walls are typically single-skin and often lack adequate wall-to-wall connections, leaving them vulnerable to seismic actions. This work reports a comprehensive study on the seismic fragility of unreinforced masonry buildings of the Malawi housing stock. The probability of exceeding different levels of in-plane/out-of-plane damage is estimated by considering the aleatory and epistemic uncertainties of the problem. Inter-building and intra-building variability are accounted for by adopting material test results and building survey data collected in Malawi. The inplane capacity of building walls is calculated through a finite element model that considers the orthotropic properties of masonry. The out-of-plane capacity is computed using an analytical solution, developed for walls in one way bending. In addition, record-to-record variability is considered. The new country-specific fragility models result more conservative that global estimates, which reflects the high vulnerability of Malawian masonry buildings. These fragilities can be integrated into catastrophe modelling platforms for earthquake risk assessment in Malawi and in the wider East African region.

One of the objectives of the PERPETUATE EU-FP7 project was to determine a sound approach to the quantification of the seismic vulnerability of historic centres at territorial scale. The procedure presented herein provides a ten steps guideline from how to select building samples in the area of study, to how to compute the buildings' seismic performance and finally how to evaluate rehabilitation decisions to reduce the seismic fragility of the studied typologies over an entire district or city. The procedure is illustrated in this paper by way of application to The Casbah of Algiers, a world heritage site composed of building clusters from the Ottoman to the French period. Pre-existing seismic damage, decay due to lack of maintenance and environmental factor and a urban irregular and complex lay-out make this application particularly challenging. (2015) 13:177-202 Evaluation), a mechanical approach based on limit state analysis and kinematics, which allows computing collapse load factor, deriving capacity curves and determining fragility functions. As the approach identifies also the collapse mechanisms, it provides a base for choosing and evaluating the effects of strengthening interventions, which are rolled out at territorial level to improve the seismic performance of the whole sample. The effectiveness of the present procedure for the identification of the seismic vulnerability at territorial scale is discussed in the conclusions.123 178 Bull Earthquake Eng

This study presents a building classification scheme for residential houses in Malawi by focusing upon informal construction, which accounts for more than 90% of housing in the country with the highest urbanisation rate in the world. The proposed classification is compatible with the Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response (PAGER) method and can be used for seismic vulnerability assessments of building stock in Malawi. To obtain realistic proportions of the building classes that are prevalent in Malawi, a building survey was conducted in Central and Southern Malawi between 10th and 20th July 2017. The results from the survey are used to modify the PAGER-based proportions of main housing typologies by reflecting actual housing construction in the surveyed areas. The results clearly highlight the importance of using realistic building stock data for seismic risk assessment in Malawi; relying on global building stock information can result in significant bias of earthquake impact assessment.