Earthquake damages to cultural heritage constructions and simplified assessment of artworks

Recent high-intensity earthquakes, such as those occurred in L’Aquila (2009), Christchurch (2010–2011) and Emilia Romagna (2012), have caused not only a significant death toll and huge economic losses, but also heavy damage to the worldwide cultural heritage. In this paper, earthquake damage to monumental constructions is discussed and the following critical issues affecting the seismic response of historic masonry structures are identified: masonry quality; connections among structural elements; diaphragm flexibility; out-of-plane resistance of masonry walls; structural irregularities; wrong retrofit interventions; and earthquake ground motion characteristics. As damage to artworks has induced invaluable losses from a social, cultural and economic standpoint, a simplified performance-based assessment procedure is proposed on the basis of Italian guidelines for seismic risk mitigation of cultural heritage, in order to support the interpretation of observed damage. This procedure could be used for small-to-medium size artworks such as museum contents, historic archives and libraries, and archaeological elements.

► Seismic damage to cultural heritage is discussed with emphasis on masonry structures.
► Critical issues of seismic response of historic masonry structures are identified.
► A simplified PBA procedure is outlined to interpret seismic damage to artworks.