Earthquake Perception Data Highlight Natural Frequency Details of
Italian Buildings
Abstract
We analyzed more than 286,000 felt/not-felt data to study the effect of
building height on earthquake perception. We investigated the boundary
distance of perception as a function of magnitude, and we found that as
the height of the building increased, observers located on higher floors
perceived medium to high magnitude earthquakes progressively better than
smaller ones. Comparison of the perception boundary trend with seismic
response spectra allowed us to estimate the frequency of vibration
perceived by observers located at each floor/building-height case. The
results, in agreement with instrumental observation, show that the value
of the fundamental period increases with building height for the top
floor. In addition, we observed that the height of the building also
influences the vibration frequencies of basement floors and that higher
vibration modes become more evident for buildings with more than six
stories.