Observations from the 26th November 2019 Albania earthquake: the earthquake engineering field investigation team (EEFIT) mission

Abstract

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.

Earthquakes Reconnaissance Data Sources, a Literature Review

“…[26] SAR [12], [40] InSAR [41], [42], [43], [ [53], [54], [55] Closed-circuit television videos (CCTV) [56], [57] Missions deployed, or missions that have had their results published during the period covered by this literature review are Albania [47,58], Puerto Rico [45,46], Mayotte [52], Mexico [28][29][30], Palu -North Sulawesi (Indonesia) [53,56,59], Hualien (China) [51], Central Italy [32,33,35,60], Muisne (Ecuador) [35], Nepal [1,40,49], and Napa -California (USA) [54,55], Haiti [12] and L'Aquila (Italy) [14,37]. The location of major earthquakes epicentres from 2014 -2019 included as case studies in this literature review is depicted in Figure 3.…”

“…These missions collect structural, geotechnical, seismological and damage information [29]. Earthquake reconnaissance missions are undertaken by national or international organisations such as the Earthquake Engineering Field Investigation Team (EEFIT) [10,27,35,58,62,63], the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (GEER) [10,27,32,33,62,64], and Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) [10,32,35]. In Italy, the European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering (EUCENTRE) and the Italian Network of University Laboratories for Earthquake Engineering (ReLUIS) have organized earthquake reconnaissance missions and conducted follow-on seismic policy analyses.…”

“…photos, audios and videos) [34]. One example was the damage assessment app used by the EEFIT mission team deployed to Albania to collect damage data after the earthquake in 2019 [58]. The EERI, through its program Learning from Earthquakes (LFE) was the first professional organization to organize reconnaissance missions to significant seismic events.…”

Preliminary Numerical Analysis of the Seismic Response of Steel Frames With Masonry Infills Retrofitted by Buckling Restrained Braces

“…Many existing steel structures worldwide were built before the introduction of modern seismic design provisions and may exhibit high seismic vulnerability due to lack of proper lateral resisting systems and detailing, as well as inadequate energy dissipation capacity [1,2]. Among others, Di Sarno et al [3] investigated the failure patterns of an existing steel moment resisting frames (MRFs) located in Amatrice and damaged by the 2016 Central Italy earthquakes.…”

Behavior of structure type 82/2 (RC frame), during the earthquake of 26 November 2019 in Durrës, Albania

“…Also, there are some deficiencies in the current Albanian seismic code, that does not provide drift limitations for Damage Limit States. [3] Damage to infills was a widespread issue in Albania after the earthquake. The low lateral stiffness of wide beam -column connections was a likely contributor (in addition to other factors).…”