ABSTRACT
Recent and past earthquakes have shown that underground anthropogenic cavities excavated in soft rock are prone to damage, posing a major threat to their safety and having major cascading and socioeconomic impacts. From an engineering point of view, the seismic vulnerability of underground cavities can be accomplished by computing the probability of damage due to the seismic actions expected on site by using fragility curves. This work explores the applicability of this method to probabilistically evaluate the seismic vulnerability of soft rock cavities within the vision of urban resilience of historical Italian centers. The seismic behavior of rock cavities was assessed via finite element method approach and the factor of safety of the cavity roof calculated in seismic conditions was exploited to develop fragility curves. The proposed procedure is applied to a rock cavity under the historical center of Sant’Agata de’ Goti in the South of Italy.
