Cultural Heritage Buildings and the Abruzzo Earthquake: Performance and Post-Earthquake Actions (original) (raw)
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L’Aquila earthquake: emergency actions for the preservation of Cultural Heritage buildings
3rd Euro Mediterranean Symposium on Advances in Geomaterial and Structures, 2010
The architectural heritage was seriously hit by the earthquake that occurred on April 6th 2009 in the Abruzzo region, especially considering the effects on a city with the size and with historical and strategic importance as a capital of a region, L’Aquila. The activities to protect that heritage have been conducted on two parallel levels: damage surveys and design and implementation of temporary safety measures. The overall organization has been centralized in the structure “Protection of Cultural Heritage” at Di.Coma.C. (Command and Control Quarter), managed by the Civil Protection Department. This allowed the cooperation among different involved subjects (Ministry of Cultural Heritage officers, experts on structural engineering from Universities and Fire Brigade teams), with their own specific knowledge. Keystone of the operating process was the standardization of the damage survey and of its immediate and correct interpretation, through dedicated survey forms for churches and palaces, developed by the G.La.Be.C. (Working group for the protection of Cultural Heritage from natural risks). Finally, the experience in the field of temporary safety measures was extremely interesting: ideas for engineering the process were developed, in cooperation with the work of the fire brigade men, that are highly experienced technicians in the “emergency” field.
Congresso Patrimonio 2010., 2010
The architectural heritage was seriously affected by the April 6th 2009 earthquake in the Abruzzo region, especially considering the effects on a city with the size and with historical and strategic importance as a capital of a region, such as L’Aquila. The emergency activities that were carried out immediately after the earthquake, to protect the existing Cultural Heritage (C.H.) structures, were conducted on two parallel levels: (i) damage surveys and design and (ii) implementation of temporary safety measures. The overall organization was centralized in the structure “Protection of Cultural Heritage” at Di.Coma.C., managed by the Civil Protection Department. This allowed the cooperation among different involved subjects (Ministry of Cultural Heritage officers, experts on structural engineering from Universities and Fire Brigade teams), with their own specific knowledge. Keystone of the operating process was the standardization of the damage survey and of its immediate and correct interpretation, through dedicated survey forms for churches and palaces, developed by the G.La.Be.C. (Working group for the protection of C.H. from natural risks). The experience in the field of temporary safety measures was extremely interesting: ideas for engineering the process were developed, in cooperation with the work of the fire brigade men, which are highly experienced technicians in the “emergency” field. After the emergency period, it’s necessary to pass to the rehabilitation phase, this process will, among many other activities, also involve the seismic upgrade of the C.H. structures, in order to minimize damage in case other equally devastating earthquakes. As so, some “conservative” intervention criteria, capable of seismically upgrade this type of constructions and ensuring acceptable structural safety conditions, under seismic and static loads, are presented. Special attention was paid to the possibilities offered by the traditional solutions and to their possible combinations with innovative ones. These intervention criteria were developed based on the University of Padua (UNIPD) research experience in similar seismic events, as the observation of the damages resulting from this type of event are essential for: (i) the definition of new interpretative models, adjusted on the effective damage patterns experienced by the structures, and (ii) for the validation (or rejection) of intervention techniques that demonstrated different performances during seismic events; which will aid on the development of new intervention criteria. As the presented intervention criteria will be very useful on the seismic improvement of the C. H. structures in Abruzzo, the 2009 seismic event in this region will certainly provide new and important knowledge in this area, as the number of affected structures, with previous intervention, is very high.
Emergency actions for the preservation of cultural heritage buildings after the L’Aquila earthquake
4th International Conference on Hazards and Modern Heritage, 2011
The earthquake occurred on the 6th of April 2009 in the Abruzzo Region of Italy seriously hit the Cultural Heritage (C.H.) patrimony with major destructive effects on L’Aquila, a city of 70,000 inhabitants with the size and the historical and strategic importance of the region’s capital. The toll in terms of structural damages was enormous, also considered that a vast amount of buildings were made of poorly arranged masonry composed by round pebbles, with mortar of scarce mechanical characteristics.
International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2012
The Abruzzo earthquake hit the city of L'Aquila and its surroundings on the April 6, 2009. The aim of this study is to analyze the technical features of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings and assess their seismic behavior during the Abruzzo 2009 seismic event. The damage induced in the URM constructions of L'Aquila and the suburbs was severe and several such buildings collapsed. This study includes an overview of the dynamic characteristics of the earthquake and the seismic history of the region. The seismic performance of URM buildings is discussed on the basis of both the experience in L'Aquila and the village of Castelvecchio Subequo, during the post-emergency support to the Italian Department of Civil Protection (Dipartimento della Protezione Civile [DPC]), and the field investigation carried out with the patronage of the EU COST Action C26 and the cooperation of the PLINIVS Centre of Naples in three areas of the old city of L'Aquila. The main characteristics of URM buildings, the building behavior and damage are described and reviewed with due respect to the characteristics of the earthquake, as well as with reference to the structural and non-structural characteristics of buildings, using the Italian MEDEA procedure.
The Survey of Cultural Heritage After an Earthquake: The Case of Emilia–Lombardia in 2012
ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, 2016
In recent years many earthquakes hit Italy and its Cultural Heritage. The topic of survey of buildings damaged by seismic events and their interpretation has become very relevant and involved many research groups and Italian Civil Protection. <br><br> The damage survey has different roles: in the first stage, immediately after the emergency, the documentation is necessary for the shoring and protection of damaged structures (AEDES forms of Civil Protection). The aim of the second stage is the study and the documentation for the restoration, reconstruction and retrofitting of buildings. <br><br> In this context, this study presents methods and instruments used in the survey of 24 churches in the province of Mantua, Lombardy, after the 2012 earthquake sequence. The paper examines the difficulties in surveying damaged buildings and presents the classification used to define, time by time, the most suitable survey approach in the field of Geomatics. In this class...
2014
The interest for the seismic performance of existing unreinforced masonry structures has grown in the last decades. This is shown both by the scientific research and by the technical codes. However, when the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake occurred no guidelines were available for the repair and the strengthening of the historical centres as a system. In this paper the multidisciplinary framework which led to the Reconstruction Plans of 23 historical centres, belonging to the municipalities of Lucoli, Ovincoli, Rocca di Cambio, Rocca di Mezzo and affected by the 2009 seismic event, is summarised. This is done with specific reference to building and structural issues, while additional material on town-planning concerns can be found in a monographic book. The seismic performance of an historical centre is a problem of several scales. The routes network of the historical centres around L'Aquila, and of most Italian historical settlements for that matter, is characterised by reduced cr...
On April 6th 2009, the city of L'Aquila, 120 km north-east of Rome, was hit by an earthquake of intensity between VIII and IX on the Mercalli scale, widely destroying both the traditional, non-monumental architecture that characterizes a majority of residential buildings in the historic center and the considerable monumental architecture. The rebuilding process that began in the following month, addressed the issue making an emphasis on quantity solutions, largely disregarding the qualities of the heritage loss. Catastrophes management and reconstruction of built heritage after catastrophes have in recent time exceeded the technical dimension of building techniques and financing to include social, cultural and environmental elements, thus turning into a complex, multidimensional challenge. While the actions of reconstruction attempt a response to the immediate need for housing through construction methods of rapid development, several other issues arise in dealing with damaged b...