Seismic safety assessment of historical masonry buildings in Iran; Application to 19th and early 20th century period

Tabriz is located on a large and active tectonic fault, belongs to a complex system connecting the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey to Alborz, in Iran. Today, more than 600 historical buildings have been identified in Tabriz, that need to be analyzed and conserved. Due to the lack of guidelines dealing with historical constructions, the evaluation of the seismic safety of those buildings is compromised. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to evaluate the seismic safety of historical buildings using the Italian Guidelines, demonstrating that the approach must be scientific, rather than intuitive. Six historic masonry buildings, built in the Qajar period, were selected as demonstrative case studies. The seismic vulnerability of the buildings was investigated using Level1 (LV1) and Level3 (LV3) of the Italian Guidelines on Cultural Heritage. Furthermore, the efficiency and accuracy of the LV1 method in evaluating the seismic safety was determined by comparison with the LV3 results. The results show the seismic vulnerability of investigated buildings as a sample of the historic buildings in Tabriz. It is also concluded that LV1 and LV3 methods are not alternatives to each other but belong to two different levels of evaluation, with conservative results for the former.