ABSTRACT
The seismic evaluation of existing masonry buildings is a fundamental subject matter in order to define prevention strategies and to reduce seismic risk. This chapter presents the capacity curves and the fragility curves obtained through the elaboration of non-linear static analyses on typological homogeneous classes of masonry buildings, in order to allow the description of global seismic behaviour and different damage scenarios. The high seismic vulnerability that characterizes the majority of the historical and existing constructions in the Italian territory highlights the ever-increasing need to identify suitable prevention and reduction strategies concerning the seismic risk. Referring to the seismic demand envisioned for the Ultimate Limit State, the first comparison concerns the assessments of those buildings with an isolated settlement. The evaluation of different structural typologies allows the analysis of multiple factors: considering the uncertainty that often characterises the analysis of existing buildings, the identified parameters were evaluated according to their easy availability (on site) and their influence on seismic response.
