Application of Thomson-Haskell Method for damage assessment: case study of 24 August 2016 Amatrice earthquake

Rapid assessment of expected building damage immediately after an earthquake is essential for supporting emergency response. This study focuses on a simplified physical modeling approach to estimate the spatial distribution of seismic damage from the 2016 Amatrice earthquake in Central Italy. The method relies on the Thomson–Haskell propagator matrix formulation to model buildings as vertically propagating shear-wave systems, allowing the estimation of top-floor motion from ground-level seismic recordings. We use available earthquake recordings from the Italian Accelerometric Archive (ITACA) and the Osservatorio Sismico delle Strutture (OSS) to obtain strong-motion records collected both in free field and on structures. We selected four target areas, namely Amatrice, Norcia, Visso, and Sulmona, each with different epicentral distances, where different levels of damage were observed (from no damage to complete damage) during the M6.0 event on 24 August 2016. Total drift is then derived from the simulated response and compared with empirical damage thresholds to infer potential damage states. To evaluate the regional applicability of the method, representative building typologies in the area are parameterized using empirical height–period relationships and simplified shear-wave resonance formulations. The resulting response estimates are used to infer the expected spatial distribution of building damage. The results provide a first-order estimation of the spatial distribution of building damage and highlight the sensitivity of the predicted response to structural parameters such as damping and fundamental frequency. Despite its simplifying assumptions, the Thomson–Haskell approach proves computationally efficient for rapid post-event damage estimation and may support operational seismic monitoring systems for near–real-time impact assessment.