Methodology for ante and post-earthquake assessment of existing masonry buildings: a case study of an aggregate

After the L’Aquila earthquake, (6TH of April 2009, main shock at 03:32), the authors surveyed the building stock of Castelnuovo, a hamlet in the San Pio delle Camere Municipality (situated at about 20 km South-East far from L’Aquila). The macroseismic effects reached 9.5 intensity (MCS scale) at Castelnuovo, with collapse of most buildings and even the death of five people. In this paper, some results about authors’ activities in Castelnuovo territory, done in two temporary phases 2009- 2011, have been reported. In the first phase, in order to highlight the intrinsic vulnerability of masonry aggregates, a preliminary screening of the built through Survey Forms has been performed. In the second phase, for each aggregate detailed geometricalconstructive surveys and damage surveys have been done. The information collected during the in-situ work define a set of tools and a methodology that, if employed, are able to characterize the seismic behavior of existing masonry buildings in aggregate. The proposed methodology is applied to an aggregate of the historical city centre of Castelnuovo; it has been chosen because of its architectonic and structural characteristics that are typical of the other buildings of the studied area. In the last section, principal obtained results are shown.