1st Croatian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 1CroCEE 2021

The unexpected misbehavior of buildings during the recent frequent earthquakes in Mediterranean region resulted in significant loss of human lives, injuries and economic losses due to the poor capacity of their structural systems and built-in materials to sustain seismic load. Among the lessons learned from recent earthquake in southeastern Europe is that identifying existing buildings’ vulnerability and thus reconsidering and improving their seismic safety, should become one of the top priorities for both, state and local government in seismic prone regions.
The goal of the presented work, realized at IZIIS as internal scientific project, is defining and implementing seismic safety assessment Protocol for existing buildings in North Macedonia, which also could be applicable in whole southeastern Europe. The proposed Protocol is meant to be a practical tool for reliable quantitative and qualitative assessment of the buildings’ vulnerability in regions with various seismic hazard levels. The Protocol’s structure follows the modern methodological approaches worldwide, including pre-defined conditions and step procedures for identification of vulnerable buildings. It contains three levels of assessment: (1) rapid visual screening procedure, (2) simplified and (3) rigorous (in-depth) seismic analysis of buildings. The assessment procedure is meant to take a major role in establishing a seismic safety rating system in North Macedonia - a "Seismic Certificate" for a specific building. The algorithm for each phase of the Protocol depends on the "knowledge level" of the relevant parameters (site seismicity, local soil conditions, type and regularity of the structural system, importance class, construction period, design and construction regulations at the time, control of the construction process, history of conversion and changes in the structural system, previous exposure to other hazards etc.). Such evaluation, if made for a significant number of buildings, would provide a clearer picture of the seismic resistance of the existing building stock in the country.