Use of post-earthquake damage data to calibrate, validate and compare two seismic vulnerability assessment methods for vernacular architecture

Abstract

The paper presents and discusses the application of two large scale seismic vulnerability assessment methods on the island of Faial in Azores (Portugal). The two methods are specifically conceived to assess the seismic vulnerability of vernacular architecture. The first method follows a classical seismic vulnerability index approach and is referred as SVIVA (Seismic Vulnerability Index for Vernacular Architecture). The second method is referred as SAVVAS (Seismic Assessment of the Vulnerability of Vernacular Architecture Structures) and it is a numerical tool intended to estimate the seismic capacity of vernacular buildings in terms of seismic load factors associated with different structural damage limit states. The main reason behind the selection of Faial Island as a case study was the availability of post-earthquake reports of the building stock after the 1998 Azores earthquake, which allowed comparing the damage scenarios obtained using both methods with the post-earthquake damage data and thus helped for the calibration and validation of the two methods. The application of both methods led to a good fit between estimated versus observed damage grades, which validated their applicability as large-scale

Seismic Vulnerability and Loss Assessment of Vila Real de Santo António, Portugal: Application of a Novel Method

“…The ten parameters were selected based on seismic vulnerability methods existing in the literature, namely vulnerability index approaches, which also measure the seismic vulnerability of a building as a function of a set of parameters (Benedetti and Petrini 1984;Boukri and Bensaibi 2008;Vicente et al 2011, Ferreira et al 2014Shakya 2014). Also following the vulnerability index approach, four classes of increasing seismic vulnerability were defined for each parameter, from 1 (lowest) to 4 (highest), based on the previously mentioned extensive numerical parametric campaign (Ortega et al 2019a). The SAVVAS formulation and procedure is shown in Table 1.…”

“…was excluded because it corresponds to the point where the building maximum strength is reduced 20%, thus being mathematically dependent on LS3. The load factor associated to the collapse of the building is thus not defined according to this pushover curve, but was calibrated in a subsequent step using post-earthquake damage data (Ortega et al 2019b).…”

“…However, the deep mischaracterization of the built-up environment is not only detrimental in terms of loss of authenticity of an important architectural and urban heritage, but also reflects the loss of seismic awareness, as the initially adopted effective seismic resistant measures, including the characteristic Pombaline timber frame partition frontal walls, have been abandoned and the careful architectural design has been neglected. The present work presents the seismic vulnerability assessment of VRSA historical city center carried out using the recently developed Seismic Assessment of the Vulnerability of Vernacular Architecture Structures (SAVVAS) method (Ortega et al 2019a). Seismic vulnerability assessment methods are valuable tools intended to evaluate the seismic risk of buildings by providing an estimation the damage that a certain structure will suffer after a seismic event of a given intensity.…”

Historic Environmental Vulnerability Evaluation of Traditional Villages Under Geological Hazards and Influencing Factors of Adaptive Capacity: A District-Level Analysis of Lishui, China

“…Its natural exposure to increased environmental pressures and historical protection requirements often limit the enhancement of its material performance [28]. Thus, many scholars have begun fragility research of the historic environment, investigating various disasters including climate disasters [29], geological disasters [30], fires [31], earthquakes [32,33], floods [34] as well as marine and aeolian processes [35].…”

An Improved Seismic Vulnerability Assessment Approach for Historical Urban Centres: The Case Study of Campi Alto di Norcia, Italy

“…Several methods exist in the current scientific literature for the vulnerability assessment of masonry aggregates in historical city centres, based on a multi-level approach characterized by increasing knowledge and in-depth in-situ evaluations [8]. Among them, the simplest approaches are known as statistical (or observational) methods; they can be used for a quick and easy analysis of seismic risk at regional/urban scale by defining, for each masonry construction, a vulnerability index (I V ) accounting for different parameters whose weight is assumed based on expert evaluations of the post-seismic damage conditions [9]. The statistical approach allows to summarize the observed damages and the results of insitu investigations through damage probability matrices (DPMs), analysing vulnerabilities and estimating damage for different structural typologies [10,11].…”