Seismic vulnerability of building heritage of the University of Bologna: methodology and analysis

Due to the recent code developments and of the growing attention given to the seismic safety of structures, especially after the last Italian earthquakes, the analysis and verification of existing building heritage have become a fundamental tool to assess the seismic vulnerability, to safeguard human lives and to plan structural interventions. The Italian building heritage is characterized by high complexity and heterogeneity, both from architectural and structural points of view. It consists in structures built in various ages, placed both in the city center and in the outskirts, erected by different structural techniques and with different uses. For all these reasons, it is important to define a methodology to obtain comparable results to plan the future activities of risk analysis, assessment and management. Before providing a result about the level of safety of an existing building, it is essential to acquire the right knowledge and to choose a method of analysis that can capture as much as possible its actual behaviour under seismic action. This study must take into account the conventional limits imposed by the codes and those of the analytical instruments. Nowadays it is fundamental that any building manager or owner correctly knows these data to implement a strategy of prevention that can cope with the seismic hazard of the territory and to optimize the economic resources in order to eliminate vulnerabilities through specific intervention programs. The purpose of this research is to identify a methodology of verification easily manageable and adaptable to many different buildings, but at the same time able to determine the actual state of structure in terms of critical steps and structural deficiencies. In order to develop this methodology, the building heritage of the University of Bologna was taken as a reference. In particular the present building heritage has an overall floor area of approximately 470,000 m2 and consists in 59 buildings (composed by 104 Structural Units “US”), placed in the municipalities of Bologna and Ozzano Emilia.