Historic Appraisal Review and Geometric Characterization of Old Masonry Buildings in Lisbon for Seismic Risk Assessment

ABSTRACT

The Metropolitan Area of Lisbon (MAL) has the highest population and building density in Portugal, and is exposed to medium to high magnitude earthquakes due to its geographical location. Currently, the MAL housing stock is constituted by approximately 35% of masonry residential buildings with a large variability of materials and construction techniques, as a result of many centuries of history. Most of these buildings were built before the introduction of the first design code for building safety against earthquakes (RSSCS) in 1958 and therefore were only designed to support gravity loads. Given the presence of these buildings in areas of significant seismicity, a comprehensive research is needed to assess the seismic risk and define mitigation policies for this population of unreinforced masonry buildings. The main purpose of this work is thus to geometrically characterize these typologies, through an exhaustive survey of dozens of masonry buildings collected from original drawings and identify the most important aspects that can influence their seismic behavior. After a compressive historical background, the information collected is statistically analyzed and expressed through probability distributions that can be used for the development of numerical models and derive seismic vulnerability functions, fundamental to conduct seismic risk analyses.

KEYWORDS:

• Geometry data collection
• historic context
• Old Masonry Buildings (OMB)
• seismic vulnerability
• statistical analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under Grant number PD/BD/135325/2017 in the scope of the InfraRisk Doctoral Programme – Analysis and Mitigation of Risks in Infrastructures;Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [PD/BD/135325/2017];