Construction Failures and Innovative Retrofitting

The aim of this paper is twofold: (a) to briefly describe the damage caused to historical, residential and industrial buildings by the May 2012 seismic events in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy; and (b) to summarize novel repair and rehabilitation technologies that can be available to practitioners to fix damaged structures or to upgrade undamaged ones. Field inspections after the Emilia Romagna earthquakes showed that seismic vulnerability in that region was primarily due to the lack of seismic detailing in modern buildings, and the presence of heavy nonstructural masses in historical buildings. The novel retrofit technologies discussed in this paper are based on the use of non-conventional or relatively recent material systems where the reinforcement is in the form of continuous or chopped fibers.