Vulnerability Analysis for Gravity Load Designed RC Buildings in Naples – Italy

Damage scenario and risk analyses are helpful tools for the local administrators for mitigation of potential earthquake losses at the urban-regional level. One of the main issues in developing such scenarios is the choice of proper capacity functions expressing the effective seismic supply for the existing building classes and the convolution with demand in the so-called fragility analysis. This article, as a further implementation of a recently developed mechanical based procedure for class scale quantitative risk evaluation, presents the derivation of class representative capacity curves and the relative fragility curves for slight, moderate, extensive, and complete damage states as defined by the well-known HAZUS methodology. Starting from an extensive building survey of Arenella district in Naples, southern Italy, statistics on main model input parameters are obtained for selected building classes of existing and/or pre-code RC buildings. Accordingly, a number of building models is simulated designed and analyzed in order to determine building class capacity. Fragility curves are computed simulating the fraction of “failures” within a capacity spectrum method framework. These capacity and fragility curves have been used in a companion paper by Lang et al. [2008] Lang, D., Molina, P. S. and Lindholm, C. 2008. Towards near real-time damage estimation using a csm-based tool for seismic risk assessment. Journal of Earthquake Engineering, 12(S2): 199–210. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] for the computation of damage scenarios in Arenella.