A simplified analysis for seismic risk assessment of reinforced concrete school buildings

Seismic risk assessment of school buildings is a problem of particular relevance in Italy, where most of the building heritage was not designed using anti-seismic criteria. The actual seismic risk of these buildings should account for seismic hazard, structural vulnerability and exposure, which in this case is particularly significant, it being related to the number of occupants. In the last decades many methods have been introduced for assessing seismic vulnerability of existing structures, which are essentially divided into three levels: expeditious and simplified methods (level 0), intermediate methods (level 1) and rigorous methods (level 2), which differ from each other by the refinement of the applied methodology of analysis. At national level, in order to provide a contribution to solve this problem, a specific filling system called “Sistema Nazionale delle Anagrafi dell’Edilizia Scolastica (SNAES)” has been developed, it consisting of a census of all existing school buildings in terms of consistency, degradation state and functionality. In this paper, starting from the existing methods and considering the parameters and the information actually present in the school building files of SNAES, the possibility to adopt a simplified methodology for assessing the seismic risk of reinforced concrete schools is analyzed.