A procedure to assess the criticalities of structures built in absence of earthquake resistant criteria

The building system is exposed, during its life, to a physiological decline process of the performance levels. In addition to the obsolescence due to natural aging, different obsolescence forms can be identified which do not have physical or mechanical origin but, in recent decades, are related to technological phenomena or regulatory requirements. Such obsolescence problems emerged because of the rapid national regulatory changes about earthquake resistant structures design also as a consequence of recent earthquakes. This paper proposes a procedure (Decision Support System-DSS) devoted to determine the critical construction issues of reinforced concrete structures built in the period 1950-1980. Indeed, such buildings are realized in compliance with old anti-seismic laws, and present particular design and performance criticalities due also to incorrect execution method. The DSS can be used by public and private companies in order to analyze the pathology of buildings at a large scale by using limited data and resources. During the definition phase of the diagnostic plan, the DSS provides the necessary steps to develop the preliminary knowledge framework. In particular, the procedure specifies the most effective diagnostic techniques and the operations to be performed during the knowledge path. The procedure is described by standard flowcharts, i.e., the activity diagrams of the Unified Modeling Language. The proposed procedure is applied to a set of real case studies: among these, the school building "Cirielli" of Bari (Italy) is here presented in order to provide the systematic acquisition of a general cognitive framework for the characterization of materials and the subsequent structural analysis.