Structural vulnerability assessment of masonry churches supported by user-reported data

Ancient masonry churches represent a particularly vulnerable architectural typology, and the experience progressively acquired during post-earthquake surveys has pointed out that recurrent damage patterns and main failure mechanisms can be identified and studied by separately looking at the different architectural “macro-elements”: façade, nave, aisle, transept, lateral chapel, dome, bell tower. In the last few years, the macro-element approach has been extensively and fruitfully applied to perform preliminary vulnerability assessments, by recognizing the correspondence between each structural macro-element and the most recurrent collapse mechanisms associated. This type of approach has been also incorporated in the Italian Guidelines for the seismic vulnerability analysis architectural heritage. In the paper, the above-mentioned method is applied by a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis approach designed for the support of decisions involving expert judgements and several alternatives. The peculiarity of the system is the retrieval of additional data by a User-reporting Application. In the specific case of masonry churches, the application involves the integration of these data in the vulnerability macro-element approach.