A single-building comparison with observed post-earthquake damage: the case study of L’Aquila municipality

A damage scenario based on observational data collected in L’Aquila Municipality after the 6th April 2009 earthquake is compared with a predicted damage scenario derived from the application of a simplified analytical method for the seismic vulnerability assessment of Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings at large scale. The observational damage scenario is derived from a database of 131 RC buildings located in the Municipality of L’Aquila, which after the 2009 earthquake were subjected to post-earthquake usability assessment procedure. The simplified analytical approach adopted is based on the Capacity Spectrum Method (CSM) to evaluate seismic capacity at different Damage States (DSs) based on the displacement capacity of structural and non-structural elements. DSs and the corresponding displacement capacity are defined through the interpretation of the observational-based DSs provided by the European Macroseismic Scale EMS-98. Data predicted by the adopted methodology are in good agreement with the observed damage distribution.