Presented by Prof. Carlo Lai, University of Pavia (Italy)
Recent earthquakes in European seismic-prone countries like Italy, Greece and Turkey have dramatically rekindled the attention on the importance of safeguarding historical monuments and cultural heritage sites against the threat from natural catastrophes. Assessing the seismic risk of an historical monument requires definition of the expected seismic hazard at the site of interest and of vulnerability and exposure of the architectural heritage to be protected. This is often the first step in setting up a suitable mitigation and retrofitting strategy. However, in defining the seismic hazard at an historical site it is important to distinguish between the design and the threshold earthquake, which somehow reflects and exacerbate the difference between a new and an existing construction. In this seminar the speaker, after a general overview of the problem, will illustrate a few documented case studies drawn from his personal experience.