Seismic Loss Estimation for an Old Masonry Building in Italy

The last seismic events in Central Italy (L’Aquila 2009, Amatrice 2016) have demonstrated that the economic loss from physical damage strongly influence the community’s recovery capability, especially when a relevant portion of the building stock is represented by unreinforced masonry (URM) constructions. As a matter of fact, URMs are recognized as the most vulnerable structures with respect to seismic forces. Furthermore, damage on masonry usually involves expensive and time-consuming repairing activities that can be carried out only by expert builders. Although these considerations are widely known among the Italian technical-scientific community, nowadays the social and political awareness about the problem is still quite low. One of the key aspects for an effective seismic risk mitigation is the analytical quantification of decision variables (e.g. monetary loss) to be shared with different stakeholders such as building owners, policy makers, insurance companies, etc. In response of this need, new assessment methodologies have been included in technical guidelines. In the present paper, the façade of a historic URM building located in the city center of L’Aquila is adopted as a case-study for the quantification of its seismic-induced economic average annual loss. In detail the Performance Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE) approach proposed by the US FEMA P-58 and the simplified economic assessment methodology included in the Italian Sisma Bonus act are herein discussed and compared, pointing out the salient aspects of their application to URMs.