Structural vulnerability assessment of facades of Ceará historic cities

Abstract The Ceara State, northeast of Brazil, has an acknowledged stock of heritage buildings located in the cities of Aracati, Sobral, Ico and Vicosa do Ceara. These Luso-Brazilian historical buildings are masonry structures dating from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and are important historical cultural assets. This way, the present paper has as the main aim to assess the structural vulnerability of facades of Ceara heritage constructions, namely the historic cities of Aracati and Sobral. This paper lists the recurrent and major damages of building facades and spatially maps the structural vulnerability results. For this purpose, a novel structural vulnerability assessment of the facades, focused on typical historical Brazilian masonries is presented. The procedure is based on the assessment of qualitative and quantitative parameters derived from the analysis and treatment of general information on the structure, such as geometrical characteristics, construction technology and material properties. The results show that information on the structural vulnerability of heritage buildings can be a relevant tool to support the design intervention plans as well to identify the critical situations in need of urgent conservation/retrofitting. This paper is a precursor to dynamic analysis in Brazilian historical centers.