Decision Support System for Vulnerability Assessment of Masonry Churches Including Architectural and Artistic Assets

Abstract

The heritage building stock represents a significant element at risk from earthquakes, as recent seismic events have shown, especially in the Mediterranean area. In fact, in the last few years, the issue of assessing its seismic vulnerability has been widely discussed by the scientific community. The vulnerability assessment procedures involve many critical points related to the complexity and uncertainty of the parameters involved. If a detailed analysis of the individual buildings is to be performed this of course requires a great effort in both the data retrieval, modelling and analysis phases. In particular, historical masonry churches have been studied in detail in Italy and empirical approaches have been proposed in which a vulnerability index based on the classification of recurrent failure mechanisms is defined, exploiting a macro-elements approach to identify the parameters that influence the index. On the other hand, intangible aspects related to the architectural, historical and artistic value are not included in the Index, either in the structural parts themselves or in additional non-structural elements or contents. This paper proposes a procedure that combines the well-known vulnerability analysis based on the macro-elements approach and classification of recurrent failure mechanisms with an evaluation of the church’s architectural and artistic assets, such as frescoes, statues and paintings, by applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The novel procedure is integrated in a useful Decision Support System to provide a complete overview of a church’s structural condition, including its artworks, in order to create a priority scale for the assessment, retrofitting and protection of existing masonry churches.

Full document

References

[1] Canuti, C., S. Carbonari, A. Dall’Asta, L. Dezi, F. Gara, G. Leoni, M. Morici, E. Petrucci, A. Prota, and A. Zona. 2019. Post- earthquake damage and vulnerability assessment of churches in the Marche Region struck by the 2016 central Italy seismic sequence. International Journal of Architectural Heritage 1–22. doi:10.1080/15583058.2019.1653403.

[2] Sangiorgio, V., G. Uva, and F. Fatiguso. 2018. User-reporting based semeiotic assessment of existing building stock at the regional scale. Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 32 (6):04018079. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)CF.1943- 5509.0001227.

[3] Sangiorgio, V., G. Uva, F. Fatiguso, and J. M. Adam. 2019. A new index to evaluate exposure and potential damage to RC building structures in coastal areas. Engineering Failure Analysis 100:439–55. doi:10.1016/j.engfailanal.2019.02.052.

[4] Lagomarsino, S., S. Podestà, G. Cifani, and A. Lemme. 2004. The 31st October 2002 earthquake in Molise (Italy): A new methodology for the damage and seismic vulnerability survey of churches. Proceeding of the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering Vancouver, B.C., Canada, August 1–6.

[5] Sangiorgio, V., Uva, G., and Adam, J. M. 2020. Integrated Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Historical Masonry Churches Including Architectural and Artistic Assets Based on Macro-element Approach. International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 1- 14. doi: 10.1080/15583058.2019.1709916.

[6] Saaty, T. L. (2008). Decision making with the analytic hierarchy process. International journal of services sciences, 1(1), 83-98.

[7] Sangiorgio, V., G. Uva, and F. Fatiguso. 2017. Optimized AHP to overcome limits in weigh calculation: A building perfor- mance application. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0001418.

[8] Uva, G., Sangiorgio, V., Ruggieri, S., & Fatiguso, F. (2019). Structural vulnerability assessment of masonry churches supported by user-reported data and modern Internet of Things (IoT). Measurement, 131, 183-192.

[9] Sangiorgio, V., Uva, G., & Fatiguso, F. (2016). A procedure to assess the criticalities of structures built in absence of earthquake resistant criteria. REHABEND, 2016, 631-639.

[10] De Matteis, G., E. Criber, and G. Brando. 2016. Damage probability matrices for three- nave masonry churches in Abruzzi after the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. International Journal of Architectural Heritage 10 (2–3):120–45.

[11] De Matteis, G., G. Brando, and V. Corlito. 2019a. Predictive model for seismic vulnerability assessment of churches based on the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering 17 (9):4909–36. doi:10.1007/s10518-019-00656-7.

[12] Jokilehto, J. 2006. World heritage: Defining the outstanding universal value. City and Time 2 (2):1.

[13] İpekoğlu, B. 2006. An architectural evaluation method for con- servation of traditional dwellings. Building and Environment 41 (3):386–94. doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2005.02.009.

[14] Ghizzi, S. 1994. Aspetti economici del restauro archeolgoico, in Note di Economia dei Beni Culturali ed Ambientali. Rivista di Analisi dei Problemi di Finanziamento, Valutazione e Gestione dei Progetti di Investimento per il Restauro e la Valorizzazione dei Beni Culturali, Anno II, Numero 1, Roma. doi:10.3168/jds.S0022-0302(94)77044-2.

[15] Sangiorgio, V., Martiradonna, S., Uva, G., & Fatiguso, F. (2017, September). An information system for masonry building monitoring. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics, and Informatics (SOLI) (pp. 230-235). IEEE.