Seismic hazard assessment for the protection of cultural heritage in Greece: Methodological approaches for national and local scale assessment (pilot areas of Aighio, Kalamata and Heraklion)

Abstract

The rich Greek cultural heritage has been always threatened by the intense seismic activity in the broader Aegean region. The objective of the presented project is to develop an integrated tool for the engineers in order to protect the Greek monuments, museums and archaeological sites against strong earthquakes. In order to achieve this goal a GIS-based database was developed with a bidirectional purpose: to collect and combine all necessary data about the monuments and their regional geological and seismotectonic conditions and to assess seismic hazard for each and every monument using the most modern techniques. In this paper we present the structure and development of our database, we propose a methodological procedure for estimating seismic hazard in Greece which will be the basis for the structural assessment of historical structures. The preliminary results show that the estimated values of maximum ground acceleration are quite high for areas in close proximity with large faults, especially when combined with loose ground conditions. Therefore an update of the protection code would be necessary. Subsequently the estimated values of maximum ground acceleration have been applied to three cases of monuments for the determination of the most vulnerable parts of the structure and the verification of the observed pathology.