Seismic risk of non-structural elements: IT tool for raising awareness and mitigate consequences

In many part of the world, including Italy, seismic design approaches for non-structural elements (NSEs) are incomplete or missing from standards and codes. This is often due to the lack of information on the seismic behavior of non-structural building components, as also expressed by the research community. Nevertheless, in several cases, international standards exist but national regulations do not enforce their use, leading to some impediments to incorporate seismic design of non-structural elements into practice by designers and manufacturers. The inadequate performance of NSEs often observed during past seismic events, even if not extreme ones, underlines the deficiency in terms of proper design strategies of NSEs. In order to reduce the economic losses, it appears essential to raise awareness from many points of view and to involve different stakeholders. For examples, designers need to be informed about available design methods and risk mitigation strategies, building control officers need to understand how to perform quality checks and final clients, or owners, needs to switch to a logic of generalized costs. In the past, few attempts were made to collect data (mainly from field observations) on the behavior of NSEs. This paper presents a new trial to gather information, starting from the experience of the past. The database developed by the EUCENTRE Foundation, in collaboration with the Italian Civil Protection Department, the International SPONSE (Seismic Performances Of Non-Structural Elements) Association and IUSS (University School for Advanced Study in Pavia, Italy), provides a contribution to this endeavor. Besides collecting data on NSE performances, the database includes references to state of the art guidelines and standards, design approaches and qualification methods, creating a direct link to each considered NSE typology. Because the scope of the database is not only to collect information but also to raise awareness on the importance of the seismic design of NSEs, besides normal data accessing tools, a BIM module has been also developed. The BIM module allows to link part of content of the NSE database with Building Information Models in order to expose information to a broader community and to help in the implementation into practice of the seismic design/assessment of NSEs. International standards specifically aimed at the classification and organization of information on construction work were used to develop the database and to facilitate its integration in BIM software and localization. This strategy allows for and facilitates the adaptation to multiple languages and national contexts.