Abstract:
During the 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence, extensive damage occurred to New Zealand historical and architectural heritage, and particularly to unreinforced stone and clay brick masonry churches. Of 309 unreinforced masonry churches identified nationwide, a sample of 80 buildings belonging to the affected region was studied and their performance analysed statistically. Structural behaviour of religious buildings was described in terms of mechanisms affecting the so-called macro-elements, being portions of the building behaving more or less independently. Discrete local damage levels were correlated with macroseismic shaking intensity through Damage Probability Matrices. Multiple-linear regressions were also considered, accounting for additional modifiers increasing/reducing the vulnerability of the macro-elements. Results show the relevance of the proposed multiple-linear regression models for the national heritage of churches and the advisability of extending mechanism-based regressions to other countries besides New Zealand.