The series of recent catastrophic earthquakes worldwide have further emphasized the evident
complexity and difficulty related to the evaluation of the post-earthquake seismic residual
capacity of buildings. In the aftermath of a major seismic event, a fast, yet effective, safety
evaluation procedure for earthquake-damaged buildings is critical to speed up and support the
definition of emergency planning strategies, as well as to provide useful intel to the stakeholders
and aid the decision-making process to enhance community resilience.
Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the possible implementations of a procedure based on
SLaMA (Simple Lateral Mechanism Analysis) methodology for the seismic assessment of
damaged Reinforced Concrete (RC) frame buildings. The proposed procedure is based on the
use of reduction coefficients for damaged structural members, in line with the FEMA 306
approach, and an update of the “hierarchy of strength” at the subassembly level by accounting
for the earthquake-related damage. Results are compared against a numerical model in terms
of a Capacity vs. Demand Safety Index” (IS-V or %New Building Standard, %NBS) and
Expected Annual Losses (EAL). Moreover, the simplified procedure can be used to assess the
feasibility and effects of a repair/retrofit solution.
Results show that the proposed analytical procedure is able to estimate with reasonable
accuracy, considering its simplified nature, and the performance of the building when
compared to numerical analyses. Finally, the effect of the use of low-damage exoskeletons
based on the PRESSS low-damage technology has been evaluated via the application of the
Displacement-Based Retrofit procedure