Seismic vulnerability assessment of heritage-protected school buildings: experimental and numerical modeling approaches

Abstract

The safety assessment of existing structures constitutes a quantitative process aimed at evaluating a structure’s load-bearing capacity while ensuring compliance with current regulatory safety standards. Enhancing structural safety typically requires targeted interventions, ranging from localized modifications to comprehensive system upgrades. In the case of protected historical buildings serving social or strategic functions, this assessment was conducted through a systematic approach involving three key phases: first, a detailed geometric survey of all structural elements; second, comprehensive material investigations to characterize construction properties; and third, numerical modeling to evaluate seismic vulnerability and identify necessary performance improvements. This rigorous methodology generates substantial technical data requiring careful analysis and integration, often resulting in intervention strategies that demand extended planning and implementation periods due to the complex nature of historical structures. The work, through the methodology described above, applied to a historic complex in Vicenza, representative of many similar examples in Italy, highlights the need to explore all possible ways to satisfy many requests including make these buildings still useful to the community and at the same time make them safe from the point of view of seismic risk.