Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Masonry Churches through the Application of probabilistic Methods"

The 2009 seismic event occurred in L’Aquila (Italy) caused many losses, with severe damage of the whole monumental heritage of the Abruzzi Region and in particular for churches. The current paper reports the main results of a research campaign carried out by the authors after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. This has been focused on the religious buildings belonging to the Sulmona-Valva diocese, a territorial area located at the boundary of L’Aquila district, which undertook slight-medium damages during the seismic events. In a first stage, a detailed investigation, carried out on the basis of observations on a population of twenty-six three naves churches, is presented aiming to define local and global levels of damage according to the criteria introduced by the EMS-98 macro-seismic scale. Therefore, the collected data-set is managed from the statistical point of view in order to obtain Damage Probability Matrices (DPMs). Then, a predictive model based on the identification of the main fragility indicators and antiseismic devices of the studied churches is dealt with. It is defined according to the methodology proposed by the Italian Guidelines on cultural heritage in order to retrieve back vulnerability indices that are properly used for assessing the mean damage due to potential earthquakes. The obtained outcomes prove that the adopted model is particularly suitable for reproducing the observed damage scenarios, it resulting a reliable and efficient tool that can be used for future risk mitigation analyses at regional level that can be implemented for evaluating intervention priorities and management strategies for the seismic protection of the regional religious heritage.