SEISMIC VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF THE CASBAH OF ALGIERS

The Casbah of Algiers is a world heritage site composed by complex building clusters of the Ottoman period which have been damaged by several seismic events. The first and the last reported earthquakes go back to 1365 and 2003, respectively. The most catastrophic seismic event occurred in 1716. Nowadays, the Casbah of Algiers is particularly degraded not only because several seismic events have occurred in the past but also because of lack of post-earthquake repair and lack of maintenance, which have increased the buildings' decay. In the framework of the PERPETUATE EU-FP7 project, funded with the aim of defining guidelines for the evaluation and the mitigation of the seismic risk to cultural heritage assets, a vulnerability assessment of the houses of the Casbah of Algiers has been carried out. A survey has been performed on site for 150 historical buildings with the aid of a quantitative data collection form developed to record the most common typologies of the Casbah. Description of structural features and identification of the parameters which affect the seismic vulnerability are used as inputs for the application of the numerical procedure FaMIVE, to identify the collapse mechanisms of the inspected buildings. The distribution of the collapse mechanisms and of the load factor multiplier is highlight show the irregularities identified in the Algerian construction affect the seismic vulnerability of the selected case study.