“Most human and economic losses caused by earthquakes come from an inadequate seismic performance of the frameworks. Sometimes, they come to collapse partial or totally”, Professor José Ramón Arango González maintains in his book “Introduction to the study of seismic vulnerability of the historical buildings of Granada”, which has just been published by the Publishing House of the University of Granada.
According to José Ramón Arango, “vulnerability studies determine the damage expected in a framework, in a group of frameworks or in an urban area caused by a earthquake. If we know the damage we can look for solutions to reduce it. Such solutione will have a cost, which will be contrasted with the expected human and economic losses to decide reinforcement investments in buildings. In the field of monuments it is necessary to develop a vulnerability methodology for non-reinforced masonry buildings”.
The book, which has almost 150 pages, includes, in six chapters, the causes and effects of earthquakes, riskiness, vulnerability and seismic risk, the mechanical performance of bricklaying walls, the earthquake area vulnerability assesment, the implementation of this method in historical buildings of Granada, as well as an account of the damages caused by earthquakes.
According to Professor Arango, “in this work we present a summary of the vulnerability study of a representative historical sector of the centre of Granada. As a final results several correlations damage-building life period have been deduced deducido depending on earthquake probabilities”.
Prof. Arango has implemented to the case of Granada the methodology developed in Italy by different research centres from the earthquake of the Friuli (1976) and it was described for the first time in 1982, from when it started to be used.
Further information: José Ramón Arango González
Dpt. of Mechanics of Continuous Means and Theory of Structures
University of Granada – Phone number: 958 246141. E-mail: jarango@ugr.es
