Procedures for seismic assessment of unreinforced masonry buildings

Recent legislation requires all unreinforced masonry buildings in New Zealand to be seismically assessed. If the building is found to have less than 1/3rd of the strength of a comparable new building, then it is described as earthquake prone, and must be either strengthened or demolished. To complete the assessment process, all buildings are first subject to an Initial Evaluation Procedure (IEP). Currently, software is being developed to facilitate execution of the IEP during field inspection of the building, with data relayed to a centralized web-based depository. If the IEP indicates that the building is earthquake prone then a detailed seismic assessment must be conducted. A variety of detailed assessment procedures exist, but New Zealand practitioners have communicated varying degrees of dissatisfaction with these techniques and an improved detailed assessment procedure is therefore being developed. Aspects of the IEP process and detailed assessment procedures available and under development are reported.