York Earthquake Building Mitigation Implementation Project: Final Report

Older unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings have been found to perform poorly in historical Australian earthquakes. Where these building are present in pedestrian precincts, they represent a significant risk to people and communities. Some towns and cities have a significant proportion of this type of building within business districts and Perth CBD is an example having 48% by number of URM construction ranging from pre-Federation to early-to-mid twentieth century in age. Further, these buildings are often of significant heritage value providing a sense of place to residents and contribute to visitor related business revenue. These factors all come to play in the town of York which is also in an area of elevated earthquake hazard. There is a need for information inform strategies and decision making around reducing the risk they represent. This project has had a focus on York and was designed as a three-year collaboration between researchers, industry and local stakeholders to improve the understanding of the vulnerability of older unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings. The building types considered are of the types found in York and other larger communities and the project has included methods of retrofit that can enhance the resilience of these buildings to earthquake hazard. It has further included the promotion of expertise with building design professionals and in the construction industry to undertake this work through a demonstration projects. Specifically, the project has been a collaboration between the Shire of York, the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, the University of Adelaide and Geoscience Australia. While not a direct project partner, the Department of Planning Lands and Heritage (DPLH) has also been a key stakeholder that has sought to facilitate the application for grant funding for the mitigation activity to be studied as part of this project.