Realization of international charters and recommendations for seismic retrofitting of historic masonry cultural heritage. Integrity and authenticity

Despite the development of engineering science, especially in application of modern engineered structural elements and materials, a significant proportion of the world population are living in masonry structures. Nowadays, the masonry construction technique due to its environmental sustainability, local availability of materials everywhere, simplicity in construction technique and cost-effectiveness will continue to be built everywhere in the world even in areas with high seismic risk. Meanwhile, the historic fabric of historic masonry structures represents the history and culture of people in a specific geographic location. So that the raw building materials had altered and assembled to form buildings which have displayed the modification and manipulation of natural materials by human labors. However, the preservation of world earthen architecture not only is the preservation of earthen buildings, but also is the protection of traditions and human genius applied to erect primary structures for specific requirements. Therefore, it is important to provide adequate upgrading to these vulnerable types of structures, both modern and historic ones. In this case, unlike modern masonry structures, the seismic improvement should ensure “life-safety protection”, and at the same time it should also preserve the “structural integrity and authenticity”. In this paper, it is tried to represent an intelligible review on the main international norms, charters and recommendations for seismic retrofitting of masonry cultural heritage properties.