Holistic seismic assessment of Eastern Canada's old unreinforced masonry structures

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The impact of a damaging earthquake striking Eastern Canada's medium-to-high seismicity cities could be catastrophic. This is largely due to the predominant presence in populous urban centres of vulnerable old (or pre-code) unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings - a relevant share of schools, fire stations, power plants and heritage (or historic) constructions also at the national level - posing a serious threat to our safety, economy and cultural identity. Past research, albeit informative, has not extensively nor systematically addressed this key issue, which undermines disaster preparedness and recovery. The long-term (>5 years) goal of this transformative program is to enhance the seismic resilience of Eastern Canada's old URM buildings, for reducing failure probabilities, consequences and recovery time. To this end, effective seismic risk models and mitigation strategies are needed, but not yet available, given the scattered nature of existing building inventories, the limited knowledge of the structural features of old URM structures and the unknown effects of local high-frequency ground-shakings, as well as the absence of ad-hoc numerical assessment guidelines; engineers still inappropriately rely on steel/concrete analysis techniques. This program addresses these key research gaps by focusing on historic URM structures - a better documented and more accessible typological subset of old buildings with added heritage value, through three specific short-term (<5 years) objectives: I-classification: select representative buildings via typological analysis, enabled by unifying past building inventories into a novel open-access web platform that will allow us to focus on a few key assets and share new knowledge with diverse experts; II-characterization: elucidate structural properties by gathering field evidence via reality capture and in-situ inspection/testing, to substantiate seismic analyses; III-evaluation: assess seismic responses via informed numerical models, to evaluate the impact of local seismicity, recurrent damage mechanisms and the influence of epistemic/statistical uncertainties on predictions, enabling us to identify suitable analysis approaches. In the short-term, this innovative program will produce new knowledge on Eastern Canada's historic URM structures, also applicable to local old URM buildings, and enhance the capacity of engineers to evaluate their seismic response, providing missing guidance on numerical modelling and improving retrofit design. In the long-term, our original contributions have the potential to guide regional seismic risk assessment and mitigation efforts and increase the lifespan of old URM buildings, in line with Canada's strategic priorities (e.g. United Nations 'Agenda of Sustainable Development) and commitments (e.g. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction). Through this program, HQP will receive unique training in fields of increasing demand, enabling them to excel within and beyond academia.