Earthquake Damage Scenarios of the Building

Abstract. Damage scenarios relevant to the building stock of the town of Potenza, Southern Italy,
are presented. A procedure for the preparation of scenarios has been purposely set up. In the first
step, the inventory of the building stock has been made. Location and characteristics of buildings
have been obtained from a survey carried out after the 1990 Potenza earthquake and further updated
in 1999. In the second step, the absolute vulnerability of the buildings has been evaluated. A hybrid
technique has been used, where typological analyses and expert judgement are combined together.
Beyond the classes of vulnerability A, B and C of the MSK scale, the class D of EMS98 scale, for the
less vulnerable buildings, has been considered. The third step has been the selection of the reference
earthquakes by including also local amplification effects. Two events with 50 and 475 years return
periods have been chosen as representative, respectively, of a damaging and of a destructive seismic
event expected in Potenza. The sites that may exhibit important amplification effects have been identified
using the first level method of the TC4 Manual. Damage scenarios of dwelling buildings have
been prepared in the fourth step and reported in a GIS. They are relevant to the selected reference
earthquakes, taking into account or not site effects. The generally low vulnerability of buildings
results in a limited number of damaged buildings for the lower intensity earthquake, and of collapsed
buildings, for the higher intensity earthquake. The influence of site effects on the damage distribution
is significant.