This paper looks at the structural properties of adobe buildings in
Cusco, Peru, for use in seismic risk assessment.
The geometrical properties (typology) of adobe dwellings from Cusco
have been established according to a building-by-building survey.
Cusco has been chosen for this study as, according to the national
census, around 80% of the building stock in this town is constructed
with adobe.
Furthermore, this region of the country is relatively seismically active
and thus seismic risk assessment studies are warranted. Additional
structural information of adobe buildings has been obtained from
experimental tests carried out at the Catholic University of Peru. These
tests have allowed the inter-storey drift capacity and the period of
vibration of adobe buildings to be derived.
A database containing the principal geometrical properties of 30
dwellings has been created which has allowed the mean, standard
deviation and probability density functions (PDF) to be defined for
each parameter such as storey height, wall length, etc.
These properties are of use in a recently proposed probabilistic displacement-
based earthquake loss assessment method (DBELA) which
generates random populations of buildings based on this input data.
The structural capacity of each random building is then predicted
based on structural mechanics principles, and by comparing this
capacity with the demand from earthquakes, estimates of the probability
of damage can be made
