SP-BELA: A STRUCTURAL SEISMIC VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY BASED ON PUSHOVER CURVES

SP-BELA (Simplified Pushover-Based Earthquake Loss Assessment) is a methodology that allows to define the vulnerability of a building taxonomy by associating it with a portfolio of capacity curves. The main advantage of this methodology is that it keeps the capacity of the buildings separate from the demand imposed by the shaking at the site. This makes the methodology highly flexible and, in principle, applicable to many types of buildings, or at least to those whose response to inertial actions can be described by a pushover curve. The methodology describes the seismic behaviour of a building taxonomy through the simplified mechanical model of a prototype building. The model includes the known data of the taxonomy (e.g., number of floors) and generates a population of buildings using random variables that represent the variability of the buildings belonging to the taxonomy. Therefore, the more data available, the more reliable and accurate the definition of seismic capacity will be because less unknown data will need to be generated. This article outlines the application of the methodology to the reinforced concrete and masonry buildings since these structural types are the most representative of the built environment in Italy and Mediterranean countries. The article also defines the calibration process to which SP-BELA undergoes, testing its ability to numerically replicate the damage scenario of events that occurred in Italy in recent decades. Potential future developments of the methodology are also discussed. Finally, we briefly document the implementation of SP-BELA in platform that the Eucentre Foundation developed for the Italian Civil Protection Department (ICPD) to assess the seismic risk of the Italian building assets and calculate the damage scenario due to an earthquake.