Deriving vulnerability curves using Italian earthquake damage data

The concerted effort to collect earthquake damage data in Italy over the past 30 years has led to the development of an extensive database from which vulnerability predictions for the Italian building stock can be derived. A methodology to derive empirical vulnerability curves with the aforementioned data is presented herein and the resulting curves have been directly compared with mechanics-based vulnerability curves. However, it has been found that a valid comparison between the empirical and analytical vulnerability curves is not possible mainly due to a number of shortcomings in the database of surveyed buildings. A detailed discussion of the difficulties in deriving vulnerability curves from the current observed damage database is thus also presented.