ABSTRACT
During the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence, extensive damage occurred to New Zealand historical and architectural heritage, and particularly to unreinforced stone and clay brick masonry churches. A list of 309 unreinforced masonry churches across New Zealand has been compiled from various reference sources, and detailed surveys were performed on a sample of 80 buildings in the affected region, in order to improve the understanding of the seismic response of ecclesiastic buildings during the earthquake sequence. A sample of 68 affected buildings was directly surveyed during 2014, while data concerning the damage suffered from the 12 already demolished churches derive from the surveys carried out in 2011, immediately after the major events. Damage probability matrices have generally been proposed for the global performance of a church, being computed by means of the global damage index, id, then transformed into discrete variables expressing global damage in levels, damage level.
