Seismic Risk Assessment and Mitigation at Emergency Limit Condition of Historical Buildings along Strategic Urban Roadways. Application to the “Antiga Esquerra de L’Eixample” Neighborhood of Barcelona

This article presents a management tool for the large-scale assessment and mitigation of the seismic risk of urban systems. The research introduces a new perspective for a scientifically tackled holistic approach. The proposed methodology considers multiple objectives, from the identification of the most vulnerable buildings whose collapse may hinder the operationality of strategic urban roadways after the occurrence of an earthquake, up to the proposal of proper interventions to improve their functionality. The approach uses a performance-based approach founded on the concept of urban Emergency Limit Condition. Plotting maps of geo-referenced scenarios by means of GIS software have revealed to be extremely useful to detect the weak points of the urban network and to plan suitable strategies of seismic risk mitigation and appropriate enhancement of reliability. The proposed methodology is applied to the “Antiga Esquerra de l’Eixample” neighborhood of Barcelona that hosts the strategic route to the hospital and is characterized by high levels of seismic vulnerability of existing buildings and exposition of its high-density population.