XVIII CONVEGNO ANIDIS ASCOLI PICENO 2019 L’ingegneria sismica in Italia 15-19 Settembre Seismic vulnerability of churches: the effect of context-related characteristics Gessica Sferrazza Papa a , Marie-José Nollet b , Maria Adelaide Parisi a a Dipartimento di Architettura, Ingegneria delle Costruzioni e Ambiente Costruito, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy b Department of Construction Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, Montréal, QC, Canada Keywords: masonry churches; seismic vulnerability assessment; damage mechanisms, Québec ABSTRACT In Italy, a systematic treatment of the vulnerability of churches and of the classification of their peculiar damage modes has been the object of extended studies. Starting from the definition of macro-elements that are the main components of a church structure, affected by specific and recurrent damage patterns, a series of the most frequent limit mechanisms has been defined and is currently adopted in practice in assessment procedures. This work investigates the possibility to apply these concepts and procedures to other regions with different church typologies and constructional traditions and to identify procedural modifications that may be necessary. The documentation of church damage, occurred in the region of Québec, and the seismic risk of the city of Montreal have motivated to set up a collaborative research program aimed at defining an approach suitable for assessing the vulnerability of historic churches in such territory. From a previously developed inventory, churches have been grouped according to their typology, pointing out the constructional characteristics of each group and the damage patterns that may or may not be applicable from the Italian mechanisms. A first prevision is made of other possible context-related damage modes. Structural analyses to confirm these assumptions are in progress. 1 INTRODUCTION The long history of earthquakes that have affected Italy devastating its architectural heritage, together with the present higher awareness of the need to promote its conservation have motivated the development of methodologies to assess the seismic vulnerability of different masonry building typologies. Specific procedures have been developed for churches, affected by a high level of vulnerability, due to their structural characteristics (e.g. Lagomarsino and Podestà 2004a, 2004b). Earthquakes that occurred in different regions of the country in the last decades, have particularly stressed this weakness (e.g. Binda et al. 2010, Lagomarsino 2012, Sorrentino et al. 2014, Carbonari et al. 2017, Cescatti et al. 2017, Sferrazza Papa and Silva 2018, Penna et al. 2019). Since the 1976 Friuli earthquake, a systematic treatment of the vulnerability of churches and the classification of their peculiar damage modes has been carried out. Starting from the definition of macro-elements that are the main components of a church structure, affected by specific and recurring damage patterns, a series of the most frequent limit mechanisms has been defined. On this basis, procedures for assessment of vulnerability and damage have been developed and, especially for damage assessment, have been widely applied during the last decades. These procedures rely on an extremely large base of observations of damage from Italian earthquakes, which to some extent relates to local construction characteristics. This work investigates the possibility to extend their use to other areas with significantly different constructional traditions pointing out the procedural modifications that may be required. The work is a first step of a collaborative project on the seismic protection of the religious architectural heritage of the Province of Québec, Canada. From a previously developed inventory, churches have been grouped according to their typology, pointing out their constructional characteristics and the damage patterns that may or may not be applicable from the Italian mechanisms. A first prevision is made of other possible context-related damage modes. Structural