Reducing seismic vulnerablity: Retrofitting historic buildings

2015-01-01

Lourenço, Paulo B.

The value of preserving historic buildings is increasingly accepted by society, which not only recognizes built cultural heritage as a part of its identity but is also more cognizant of its economicvalue. In Europe, for example, tourism accounts for 10 percentof the GDP in the EU and 12 percent of employment.1 Builtcultural heritage is a fundamental element of what draws touriststo European destinations.To a great extent, the value of historic buildings rests in theintegrity of their components as unique products of the technologyof their time and place. Unfortunately, cultural heritage buildingsare particularly vulnerable to disasters, for a variety of reasons.They are often damaged or in a state of deterioration; they werebuilt with materials with low resistance; they are heavy; and theconnections among their various structural components are frequentlyinsufficient. The main causes of damage are lack of maintenance,water-induced deterioration (from rain or rising damp), soilsettlement, and extreme events such as earthquakes. Earthquakeshave caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the last decade, inaddition to the tremendous losses in built cultural heritage.