Immediately after the earthquake of May 6, 1976 in Friuli (NE Italy) about 85,000 buildings were inspected and the same number of damage-assessment forms, containing useful information, were produced. A research team from the University of Udine (Italy) collected and reorganized these sheets inputting this information in the Fr.E.D. (Friuli Earthquake Damage) database, and reconstructing connections among seismic action, typology of construction and the level of provoked damage. Generally in the field of risk assessment of major accidents, a Probit analysis is applied to derive experimental relationships useful for the prediction of the accident's consequences. In particular, in this work, seismic damage curves, extrapolated for different typologies of residential masonry buildings, are presented. A combined use of these curves with the EMS98 and GSD scales of seismic damage is proposed to predict the damage scenarios, in terms of direct and indirect consequences, that a future earthquake could produce in an inhabited area with masonry building typologies similar to those present in the Friuli area.
