Historical earthquake catalogues are one of the building blocks for the assessment of seismic hazard. In spite of many years of research in the archives, many earthquakes remain poorly known. New sources of information are hence required.

Among these, historical buildings are witnesses of natural catastrophes recorded in their walls as structural disorders, repairs, restorations.

The ambition of this project is to study past earthquakes using buildings as “stone seismometers”, analysing the seismic ground motions required to explain building repairs/disorders, or their absence. To gain such a knowledge on past ground motions, it is necessary to define an interdisciplinary strategy based on: innovative techniques to inventory repairs introduced in the building archaeology; realistic seismic input signals consistent with the seismotectonic context; digital building models implementing realistic geometry and construction materials as well as robust modelling of masonry behaviour.

With this aim, a methodology connecting “ArChaeology, inventory of RecOnstruction, Seismology and Structural engineering” (ACROSS) is introduced.

The project goal is to demonstrate that archaeological characterization of post-seismic repairs on buildings can be successfully used to infer key ground motion and earthquake source characteristics of historical earthquakes.

WEB SITE ACROSS PROJECT