State of the art of simplified analytical methods for seismic vulnerability assessment of unreinforced masonry buildings

Abstract

Cities in the developing world are facing outstanding economic and human losses caused by natural hazards such as earthquakes, and the amount of losses is affected by the quality of preventive measures and emergency management. For this reason, seismic vulnerability assessment is considered a crucial part of a strategy for seismic risk mitigation and for improving the resiliency of cities. Due to the high number of building archetypes for the seismic vulnerability assessment at a large scale, fast, simplified methods have been proposed that can facilitate the assessment procedure with low computational effort. Simplified methods can be categorized into three groups: analytical, empirical, and hybrid methods. In this study, simplified analytical methods for the seismic vulnerability assessment of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings were reviewed, starting with their classification into three main groups: collapse mechanism-based, capacity spectrum-based, and fully displacement-based methods. Finally, attention was given to the corresponding software packages that were developed to facilitate the assessment procedure.