Assessment and mitigation of seismic risk at the urban scale: an application to the historic city center of Leiria, Portugal

Preprint versionThe implementation of a culture of seismic risk preparedness is becoming increasingly critical in Europe as the building stock ages and the awareness about seismic risk rises. In this context, the assessment of the seismic vulnerability of existing buildings, followed by the implementation of appropriate retrofitting solutions, can help to substantially reduce the levels of physical damage and economic impact of future events. The central region of Portugal is particularly susceptible to large seismic events and is characterized by the prevalence of historic masonry buildings. This work aims to validate assessment methods for the risk of historical city centers in order to propose management strategies for municipalities and assess the economic impact of large-scale seismic retrofitting. To do this, an application of these methods was performed on the historical city center of Leiria. An in-depth inspection was performed of the entire center and the results were compiled into a database. Using an index-based seismic vulnerability assessment approach, a vulnerability assessment was made for each building. Based on vulnerability and predicted damage, estimates of human and economic losses were made for the city center before and after retrofitting to justify interventions on a broad scale.- This work was enabled and funded by the Advanced Masters in Structural Analysis of Monuments and Historic Constructions (SAHC) at the University of Minho and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the postdoctoral fellowship SFRH/BPD/122598/2016. The authors would like to thank the students at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria for their assistance in coordinating and executing fieldwork. Additionally, many thanks to the Municipality of Leiria for providing access to their records and support of the work