Search

Higher education institutions are in a period of profound transformation. In particular, many governments have implemented mechanisms that attempt to relate funding to performance. In this article, we reflect about the relevance of those changes from a regional point of view, by analysing the recent introduction of a performance-based research funding system in Italy. The findings lead to policy indications, questioning the effectiveness of selective funding of universities based on national research assessment exercises when there is heterogeneity across regions in universities scientific performance and, at the same time, there is a huge dispersion of research performance within the individual universities.

The Italian infrastructure network of roads and bridges is one of the most complex in the world due to the territory orography. Italy is strongly interested in seismic and hydrogeological hazards, and, in addition, degradation and obsolescence phenomena are common in infrastructures nowadays approaching the end of their nominal life. Furthermore, these infrastructures are subjected to continuous traffic load increase over time. In 2020, the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT) published the guidelines for risk classification and management, safety assessment, and monitoring of existing bridges (LG2020) as an attempt to unify the multiple procedures of inspection, monitoring, and maintenance of infrastructures. The multilevel approach proposed in the Italian guidelines for the management of the complex existing system of bridges is herein discussed and investigated, focusing on an operational methodology to evaluate the impact of structural defects on the risk assessment. This study aims to develop an operational methodology for the application of the procedure generically depicted in the LG2020 for the attribution of the level of defectiveness based on the outcomes of the periodical inspections. In particular, such a methodology is applied to two of the most widespread bridge structural typologies in the Mediterranean area: reinforced concrete (RC) and prestressed RC (PRC) bridges. The defects' extent and level to structural members are associated with the proposed procedure for different bridge risk ratings. The work presents a useful tool to proceed from the outcomes of the inspections to the assignment of a level of defectiveness for the bridge, which enters into the risk assessment. This is to drive decision-makers in the definition of future actions and interventions, such as the detailed assessment of safety level and relevant strengthening interventions or installation of continuous monitoring systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Special economic zones (ZES) are an industrial policy instrument aimed at creating, in specific territories, particularly advantageous establishment conditions for companies in terms of tax and financial benefits, infrastructures, agglomeration economies. The goal is to generate institutional and contextual factors capable of attracting investments and facilitating business activity. The SEZs, although present for a long time in many countries, were formally established in Italy only in 2017 in the southern regions and, after a long process of regulatory changes and reduced operations, were included in the reform plan and in the investments program of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP): they are therefore about to enter their full implementation. This paper analyzes the criticality and potentials of this policy tool. The most evident critical points are the lack of a theoretical-conceptual framework within which to place this intervention policy and the choice of an overly simplified and centralizing governance, as well as the absence of a critical evaluation of the experiences and models of territorial development that have characterized the economic history of our country over the last fifty years. A critical evaluation of the lessons deriving from the experiences of policies and instruments implemented in the past, and in other areas of the world, but above all a careful diagnosis of the current scenario characterized by strong geo-political, institutional and market changes, and the definition of a clear conceptual framework, however, could be extremely useful elements to look at the future of the ZES from a less uncertain perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structural and seismic fragility assessment of minor historical centers of the Inner Peripheries of Italy is a key phase of the preservation process of the historical and cultural features of a portion of the Italian building stock, whose reuse is crucial for the reversal of shrinking trends and the stimulation of population growth. In this framework, the opportunities offered by digital crowd-sourcing technologies with respect to performing probabilistic structural safety assessment at a large scale are investigated herein. The objective of this research was to exploit data and information available on the web such that the key building features of an area of interest are collected through virtual inspections, historical databases, maps, urban plans, etc. Thus, homogeneous clusters of buildings identified in the area of interest are catalogued and associated with specific building classes (chosen among those available in the literature), and the buildings' levels of seismic fragility are determined through the development of fragility curves. The research outcomes show that the proposed approach provides a satisfactory initial screening of the seismic fragility level of an area, thus allowing for the identification of priority zones that require further investigations or structural interventions to mitigate seismic risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on seismic fragility and damage scenario assessment of minor Italian historical centres through the development of urban fragility curves. With reference to the case study of Balvano, a small centre located in Basilicata Region of Italy, two hybrid models have been adopted. The first is a mechanic-based hybrid model developed by the authors to derive urban fragility curves specifically; the second is the macroseismic method, originally conceived to derive typological fragility curves for single building classes, expanded to derive urban fragility curve herein. Balvano was strongly struck by 1980 Irpinia-Basilicata earthquake (Ms = 6.90) and hence subjected to an intense reconstruction process during 1980s, where almost the 80% of the buildings were reconstructed with reinforced concrete structures in the place of unreinforced masonry ones. Seismic vulnerability and damage scenarios before and after 1980 have been assessed and compared with the purpose of validating the effectiveness of the urban scale fragility curves obtained through hybrid methodologies and quantifying the effect of the 'new' seismic hazard maps and first seismic codes and recommendations released by the Italian Government in the aftermath of 1980 for the construction of new buildings or for retrofitting the existing ones. A good matching between predicted and occurred damage scenario from the research outcomes emerged, confirming the effectiveness of the urban scale hybrid fragility curves to assess seismic vulnerability at urban scale. Moreover, the comparison of the damage scenarios pre and post-reconstruction highlighted the crucial role played by the code prescriptions adopted in that years for reducing the seismic vulnerability of the municipality and the importance of the 'new' seismic hazard maps introduced in 1980s. Finally, the differences between mechanical-based hybrid and macroseismic model have been discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessment of churches based on empirical data at a territorial scale is a suitable tool to have an overview of the seismic behaviour of this peculiar structural typology and to evaluate their current state of vulnerability. Fragility and vulnerability curves are also aimed to perform the analysis of different seismic scenarios. The paper presents a detailed typological analysis of 633 single-nave churches, as a selected subset of the database previously examined by the authors, with the aim of evaluating more in detail the influence of some parameters, such as masonry typology, church dimensions and presence of the bell tower, on the vulnerability of the overall church. Then, specific analyses are carried out to assess the influence played by single mechanisms on the definition of the overall damage index, with the focus of providing qualitative evaluations and explicit vulnerability and fragility curves related to the most recurring and significant collapse mechanisms. This is an original contribution of the paper in the field of the vulnerability assessment of churches, since nowadays little information is available in the literature about the damage levels related to specific mechanisms, while most attention is still focused on global damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel hybrid-based methodology devoted to develop urban fragility curves and damage probability matrices to predict likelihood seismic damage scenarios for small and medium Italian urban centres, considering URM buildings only. The concept of urban fragility curve consists of a single curve mean-representative of the seismic fragility of an entire area accounting for the combinations of building classes and their percentage, then they differ from those typological. The methodology has been developed with reference to Rocca di Mezzo, a small Italian urban centre located in the central Apennine area, Italy. Based on CarTiS inventory, building classes have been firstly recognized and urban fragility curves, representative for damage scenarios at Ultimate Limit State, developed. To predict damage scenarios from low to high-intensity earthquakes, an approach to define multi-damage urban fragility curves and damage probability matrices has been also presented. To this aim, a damage scale suffered by building classes has been defined by converting the final outcomes of the AeDES form (used in Italy for post-earthquake surveys) in the damage levels provided by the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS98). Data coming from urban fragility curves have been compared with the actual damage scenario recorded in Rocca di Mezzo after the 2009 L'Aquila's earthquake, in terms of both peak-ground acceleration and Mecalli-Cancani-Sieberg scale. The achieved results showed a good accordance between theoretical predictions and actual damage scenarios, coherent also with the damage scenarios occurred in other Italian historical centres hit by severe earthquakes over the years. Thus, the methodology can provide a first important indicator to support the development of emergently plans devoted to identify priority of interventions in such areas particularly vulnerable with respect to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural health monitoring is a crucial issue in areas with different hazard sources, such as Italy. Among non-invasive monitoring techniques, remote sensing provides useful information in supporting the management process and safety evaluations, reducing the impact of disturbances on the functionality of construction systems. The ground displacement time-series based on the analysis of Differential Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) measurements, as well as the information about the geology of the area and the geometry of the construction under monitoring, provides useful data for the built environment's structural assessment. This paper focuses on the structural monitoring and damage assessment of constructions based on the GIS integration of DInSAR measurements, geological investigation, historical surveys and 3D modeling. The methodology is applied to the residential area of Valco San Paolo in the city of Rome (Italy). Once the geological interpretation has confirmed the results of the DInSAR measurements, a quick damage assessment that considers all the possible conditions of the pre-existing damage at the time zero of the monitoring is shown for a damaged manufact in the area. The presented results highlight how the strategy to correlate the DInSAR-monitored ground settlements with the damage scales allows potentially to monitor continuous construction systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial single-storey buildings are the most diffuse typology of steel construction located in Italy. Most of these existing buildings were erected prior to the enforcement of adequate seismic provisions; hence, crucial attention is paid nowadays to the design of low-impact retrofit interventions which can restore a proper structural performance without interrupting productive activities. Within this framework, an existing industrial single-storey steel building located in Nusco (Italy) is selected in this paper as a case-study. The structure, which features moment resisting (MR) truss frames in both directions, is highly deformable and presents undersized MR bolted connections. Structural performance of the case-study was assessed by means of both global and local refined numerical analyses. As expected, the inadequate performance of connections, which fail due to brittle mechanisms, detrimentally affects the global response of the structure both in terms of lateral stiffness and resistance. This effect was accounted for in global analyses by means of properly calibrated non-linear links. Thus, both local and global retrofit interventions were designed and numerically investigated. Namely, lower chord connections were strengthened by means of rib stiffeners and additional rows of M20 10.9 bolts, whereas concentrically braced frames (CBFs) were placed on both directions' facades. Designed interventions proved to be effective for the full structural retrofitting against both seismic and wind actions without limiting building accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different forms of hazard can affect structures throughout their existence. The occurrence of a seismic event in areas exposed to different risks or already affected by other phenomena is highly likely, especially in countries characterized by high seismicity and equally high hydrogeological risk, as Italy. Nevertheless, the seismic safety assessment of reinforced concrete (RC) structures is commonly carried out considering the seismic action only, generally applied to an analytical model, neglecting the stress–strain state induced by previous ongoing phenomena. The aim of this work is to highlight the importance of the seismic safety assessment in a multi-hazard analysis, cumulating the action coming from two different hazards: landslide and earthquake. An existing RC building, located in an area affected by an intermittent landslide phenomenon with slow kinematics, that may also be subjected to strong earthquakes, is used as case study. The Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (DInSAR) approach is used to monitor the evolution in time of the landslide. DInSAR deformation data are used to detect surface ground movements applied to building foundations. A non-linear static analysis procedure is implemented for the code-based seismic safety assessment, in two different scenarios. The seismic assessment of the case-study building is implemented in a condition of structure deformed only for gravity loads, and, then, in a state of known landslide-induced deformed configuration. A comparison is proposed between the building seismic safety assessment performed in both cases, with or without the consideration of the landslide-induced displacements, showing the importance of a multi-hazard evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Médiévales is the property of Presses Universitaires de Vincennes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The structural response of unreinforced masonry buildings designed for gravity load only or with reference to obsolete seismic provisions is widely studied in the literature in order to define proper strengthening strategies and solution to mitigate the seismic risk. However, the critical analysis of the effectiveness of past used strengthening solution is still lacking. To fill such gap, the present study deals with the evaluation of the seismic performances of buildings in Campi Alto struck by the 2016 central Italy seismic sequence. The behaviour of buildings in Campi Alto is compared with that of buildings in Norcia. A large part of the buildings in these two towns was strengthened between 1980 and 2000 during the reconstruction processes following previous earthquakes which occurred in 1979 and 1997. However, the strengthened buildings in Norcia reported limited damage while a significant and widespread level of damage was detected on several strengthened buildings in the hamlet of Campi Alto. This study focuses on the buildings in Campi Alto with the aim of investigating on the reasons of their unsatisfactory behaviour. Thus, the seismic action experienced by buildings in Norcia and Campi Alto is initially compared and the main vulnerabilities of these buildings are also evaluated. Then, 20 projects of strengthening interventions submitted to the Civil Engineering Department of the Umbria Region between 1984 and 2012 have been herein analysed and discussed in order to focus on the effectiveness of the strengthening solution adopted in the past. The analyses of such projects and of the empirical damage detected after the 2016 seismic sequence is a unique opportunity to derive useful information for future applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building stock around the world is exposed to different types of natural actions such as earthquakes or landslides. In particular, Italy is one of the countries worldwide most affected by landslides. Mitigation of landslide risk is a topic of great interest for the evaluation and management of its consequences. Periodical monitoring of the landslide-induced damage on structures require high costs due to the large number of exposed elements. With respect to the reinforced concrete structures, slow-moving landslides can affect primary structural elements, but more frequently damage occurs on the most vulnerable elements of the structure such as infills. The aim of this work is to demonstrate the potential utility of satellite data derived from a remote sensing technique, known as differential synthetic aperture radar interferometry, to support the structural health monitoring of reinforced concrete buildings affected by landslides. This article shows the structural health monitoring process for a reinforced concrete infilled building within a landslide-affected area, using the differential synthetic aperture radar interferometry data as input for the structural analysis in order to investigate the evolution of damage over the years. Three-dimensional structure, including the explicit infills consideration, has been modeled based on the information available from a visual survey, obtaining the missing parameters from a simulated design process and from the literature. In the field of the civil protection programs for the landslide risk reduction, this methodology can be quickly repeated for large sets of reinforced concrete buildings. Evidence of the visual survey showed a significant damage pattern in some infills. A good agreement has been found between analytical previsions and existing damage. Moreover, a global infills damage assessment of the case study building is proposed. Finally, assuming a constant increase in displacements in future years, a prediction of the future expected damage is shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hybrid seismic fragility model for territorial-scale seismic vulnerability assessment of masonry buildings is developed and presented in this paper. The method combines expert-judgment and mechanical approaches to derive typological fragility curves for Italian residential masonry building stock. The first classifies Italian masonry buildings in five different typological classes as function of age of construction, structural typology, and seismic behaviour and damaging of buildings observed following the most severe earthquakes occurred in Italy. The second, based on numerical analyses results conducted on building prototypes, provides all the parameters necessary for developing fragility functions. Peak-Ground Acceleration (PGA) at Ultimate Limit State attainable by each building's class has been chosen as an Intensity Measure to represent fragility curves: three types of curve have been developed, each referred to mean, maximum and minimum value of PGAs defined for each building class. To represent the expected damage scenario for increasing earthquake intensities, a correlation between PGAs and Mercalli-Cancani-Sieber macroseismic intensity scale has been used and the corresponding fragility curves developed. Results show that the proposed building's classes are representative of the Italian masonry building stock and that fragility curves are effective for predicting both seismic vulnerability and expected damage scenarios for seismic-prone areas. Finally, the fragility curves have been compared with empirical curves obtained through a macroseismic approach on Italian masonry buildings available in literature, underlining the differences between the methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the observational damage from post-earthquake investigations carried out on churches of the Marche Region struck by the 2016 Central Italy seismic sequence. Such seismic activity seriously damaged many historical buildings and particularly churches, due to their intrinsic inability to develop an efficient box-like resisting mechanism. After the mainshocks, teams of structural engineers were involved in the assessment of damage of churches and in the evaluation of their usability. Collected data are processed in this work to give insight into the occurred damage and to evaluate the vulnerability of the religious buildings of the Region. To this purpose, an architectural background is firstly provided to allow for a classification of the sample, then, the most recurring damage mechanisms are identified, and a global damage index of each church is computed. The distribution of the damage over the Region is commented, as a function of the macro-seismic intensity and other important factors affecting the seismic response. Finally, the overall damage of the sample is compared to that estimated through empirical models available in the literature and comparisons with the results of previous studies are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last National Risk Assessment NRA for Italy was developed at the end of 2018 by the Department of Civil Protection (DPC) in response to the specific requirement of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 to periodically adjourn the assessment of disaster risk. The methodology adopted to perform seismic risk assessment and build national seismic risk maps was specifically developed to comply with the recent Code for Civil Protection, issuing that, in addition to a solid scientific base, risk assessment should be characterized by a wide consensus of the scientific community. As a result, six research units belonging to two Centers of Competence of the DPC, namely ReLUIS (Network of university laboratories for seismic engineering) and EUCENTRE (European Centre for Training and Research in Earthquake Engineering), collaborated under the guidance and coordination of DPC to produce the recent updating of national seismic risk maps for the residential building stock. This paper describes the methodology adopted to develop the consensus-based national seismic risk assessment and presents the main results in terms of expected damage and impact measures (unusable buildings, homeless, casualties, direct economic losses). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The catastrophic effects of recent earthquakes around the world have highlighted the vulnerability of civil buildings; in Europe, most of the existing buildings were built after World War II and since they have largely exceeded their useful life, are characterized by a high vulnerability linked both to the durability of the materials and to the lack of seismic provisions in design. The current trend in constructional field is to design interventions aimed at the seismic and energy improvement of these structures jointly, in order to achieve a sustainable and integrated retrofit intervention. To this aim, the use of 2D orthogonal steel exoskeletons for the seismic strengthening represents a suitable solution, providing at the same time an enhancement in thermal insulation, through a 'double-skin' solution. Due to the growing interest in the design of steel exoskeleton interventions, a detailed dynamic characterization of this external strengthening solution is needed. In this framework, the present work, aims to investigate the effectiveness of the investigated strengthening solution by means of bi-directional non-linear dynamic analyses. Extensive numerical analysis was carried out. The selected case-study is an Italian existing pre-1980 s RC frame building located in Mugnano di Napoli (NA, Italy), which is a medium-high seismic hazard site in Italy (peak ground acceleration equal to 0.156 g). Two alternative strengthening solutions were numerically investigated by means of non-linear time-history and incremental dynamic analyses performed applying fifteen bidirectional ground motions on three-dimensional numerical models. The results of the dynamic non-linear analyses allow to quantify more appropriate performance indicators, both in terms of expected demand and overall collapse capacity, useful for the development of optimization strategy and design of exoskeleton system. The results highlighted that both the investigated strengthening scenarios allow to increase the stiffness of the existing building and allow it to meet the current code safety requirements reducing also the residual inter-storey drift. The obtained results are not strictly related to the investigated case study, but can be extended to all the structures retrofitted that follows the presented design procedure. • The catastrophic effects of recent earthquakes around the world have highlighted the vulnerability of civil buildings. • Due to the interest in the design of exoskeleton, a dynamic characterization of this strengthening solution is needed. • The strengthening of an existing RC structure with EXO-S-2D placed orthogonally to the building façade is presented. • The efficiency of a displacement-based design procedure is validated by means of static and dynamic non-linear analyses. • The results of the dynamic non-linear analyses allow to quantifyperformance indicators of the strengthened intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Esca proper and Botryosphaeria dieback are among the most widespread Grapevine trunk diseases (GTDs), characterized by similar decline symptoms. In the present work, chronic, apoplexy and death symptoms were analysed separately in four vineyards and four different cultivars, on more than 1,000 vines per cultivar, taking into account ten-year annual surveys. The cumulative incidence of plants with chronic symptoms (CHR) reached high values on 'Sauvignon Blanc' (81.9 %), 'Cabernet Sauvignon' (79.4 %) and 'Cannonau' (66.5 %), but it was low on 'Merlot' (25.1 %). 'Sauvignon Blanc' showed the highest cumulative incidence of apoplectic events (23.1 %) and dead cordons (49.2 %), while 'Cannonau' had the greatest number of dead plants (28.8 %). In each symptom category, incidence among cultivars differed significantly according to χ² test at P ≤ 0.05. Annual incidence of foliar symptoms fluctuated over ten years (ranging from 0.9-9.5 % in 'Merlot' to 6.3-59.1 % in 'Cabernet Sauvignon'), mostly with regard to CHR. On average, every year only 33.9 % of plants showing CHR had expressed symptoms in the previous year, while 48.6 % did not show symptoms the following year. Conversely, most of the plants exhibiting apoplexy or death were symptomatic the previous year. According to Tuckey HSD test (P ≤ 0.05) 'Merlot' had the highest incidence of plants showing CHR symptoms for the first time (72.1 %) and of apparently recovered plants (76.3 %), while 'Cabernet Sauvignon' exhibited the highest incidence of plants showing CHR symptoms also the previous year (50.0 %). The 'Cabernet Sauvignon' attitude to show chronic symptoms with a certain continuity was also confirmed by the low incidence of plants with hidden symptoms (lack of symptoms in previously symptomatic vines). On the contrary, the incidence of acute symptoms (apoplectic events and dead plants) was quite low on 'Cabernet Sauvignon'. The present study confirms that GTD incidence is influenced by cultivar. All the cultivars assessed were susceptible, but with differences in intensity, type (chronic or acute) and fluctuation of symptoms. It cannot be excluded, however, that besides the genotype also external factors, as the vigour conferred by the type of soil or the combination with the rootstock, may have influenced the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the structural behaviour and the damage assessment of Italian "modern" masonry buildings during seismic events. "Modern" masonry buildings are characterized by a box-like structural behaviour, due to the presence of effective connections between horizontal floors and vertical load-bearing walls, which prevents local mechanisms such as the overturning of external façades during earthquakes. "Modern" masonry buildings were built in Italy since the first decades of XX century in those regions classified as seismic zone and since 1937 in the whole country, following the Italian code prescriptions that implicitly interdicted the erection of "ancient" masonry buildings. Starting from an in deep historical analysis of the Italian seismic codes' prescriptions for the design of "modern" masonry buildings, the typical characteristics of the most frequent structural typologies of unreinforced masonry buildings are outlined. Then, the typical damage mechanisms observed in "modern" masonry buildings damaged after the L'Aquila earthquake (2009) are reported in relation with both the global and local behaviour of the whole building and its structural elements. The analysis demonstrated that "modern" masonry buildings experienced a good box-like seismic performance, which avoided global or local collapses, but shown severe damage to piers and spandrels related to their reduced in-plane shear capacity. Given the lack of data on such kind of structural typology, this study is fundamental for understanding and modelling the seismic behaviour of "modern" masonry buildings designed before '80s according to different seismic design prescriptions and for defining effective strengthening solutions for reducing their seismic vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a detailed report on a large sample of masonry churches damaged by the 2016–2017 Central Italy seismic sequence. The first part of the work analyses the seismic sequence to give an overview of the occurred events in terms of both ground motion parameters and macro-seismic intensities. The surveyed data are organized into a database made, to date, of 990 cases, which represent almost one-fourth of the whole surveys performed during the emergency phase. Such a significant statistical sample was used to carry out a regional scale typological analysis in order to identify the most recurrent typologies of churches present in Central Italy. The analysis of the observed damage and usability outcomes allowed drawing some conclusions on the behaviour of the inspected churches under the 2016–2017 seismic sequence. The collected data were used to create damage probability matrixes for homogeneous classes of churches at different damage levels and, successively, to implement the corresponding fragility curves in terms of PGA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Churches struck by the earthquake sequence of 2016–2017 in Central Italy confirmed their seismic vulnerability, significantly higher than the one of other unreinforced masonry structures. This resulted in a much wider area affected by significant damages to churches, which were characterised by a rich variability of materials, typologies, dimensions and styles. In the area where significant damages were observed for ordinary buildings, most of the churches exhibited total or partial collapses. The time sequence of the main shocks helped in preventing casualties in churches although the collapse of a bell-gable in Accumoli caused victims in a neighbour house during the first event of August 24th, 2016. Damage surveys to churches were carried out on more than 4000 buildings, in a land area of about 30 000 km2 from September 2016 to May 2017. The data collected during the post-earthquake surveys represent a valuable source of information for better understanding the vulnerability of these structures as well as the effectiveness of past retrofitting interventions. Some examples are reported to show both damage progression due to the cumulated effect of repeated shaking and state-of-the-art strategies for short-term countermeasures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the structural performance of existing masonry and reinforced concrete bridges which were surveyed in the aftermath of the 2016 Central Italy earthquakes. Typical bridge vulnerabilities are first reviewed, as they provide a reference for the response of the bridges that were damaged by the 2016 earthquake swarm. Case studies are then discussed and preliminary numerical analyses are carried out to interpret the observed failure modes. In general, all surveyed masonry bridges experienced some extent of damage, particularly when built with poor-quality materials and subjected to geotechnical-induced effects. However, they offered a robust response in terms of collapse prevention. The majority of existing reinforced concrete bridges, although designed primarily for gravity loads, exhibited acceptable performance; however, local damage due to the poor maintenance of the structural systems was observed, which affected primarily the non-structural components of the bridges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four regions of central Italy were struck by the seismic sequence of the 2016 earthquake in the country: Lazio, Abruzzo, Umbria and Marche. This highlighted the different behaviour of masonry constructions depending on the prevention actions carried out after previous earthquakes. In particular, although damaged, the masonry buildings in the historical centre of Norcia (Umbria region) behaved significantly better than those in other regions. Indeed, the strengthening interventions carried out after the earthquakes of 1971, 1979 and 1997 greatly affected the seismic behaviour of masonry aggregates (contiguous masonry structural units, MSUs) in the historical centre, which sustained limited damage and a low number of collapses. This paper discusses the empirical data on damage collected with respect to 670 MSUs by means of the first level survey form concerning post-earthquake damage, and usability assessments (AeDES). The forms completed for the survey relate to MSUs in the historical centre of Norcia and were produced by the technicians of the Umbria Seismic Risk Office. The analysis shows the correlation between the MSU characteristics of: age of construction and renovation work; type of vertical and horizontal structures; roof types and usability rating; and the damage level and extent thereof detected in vertical structures. The effectiveness of previous strengthening interventions and the analyses of the types of strengthening solution are also discussed. A case study aggregate is analyzed in detail in order to illustrate the importance of strengthening interventions on vertical bearing elements. The strengthening interventions resulted in a sound strategy to strongly reduce losses, even in a very vulnerable centre comprised of old residential masonry aggregates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seismic assessment of the vulnerability of existing public structures, especially school buildings, is a crucial issue in seismic prone countries. Recently, several national and regional programs and activities have focussed on the mitigation of Italian public buildings. They promote the scheduling of public buildings' structural safety assessment and, when needed, the design and execution of strengthening interventions. Nevertheless, the three strong earthquakes that occurred in the last decade in Italy, Abruzzo (2009), Emilia (2012), and Central Italy (2016), confirmed the vulnerability of school buildings and the social importance of their quick re-opening after a damaging earthquake. In the present paper, the activities carried out on 1514 school building structures in the aftermath of the 2016 Central Italy earthquake sequence are reported and analysed. According to survey data collected by post-earthquake usability inspections, the paper analyses the school buildings characteristics, damage level and extent to structural and non-structural components as well as the correlation between seismic intensity and observed damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

24 - From line 18 to line 20 b Equation (9) written as HT ht must be changed in: HT