The Influences of Seismic Hazards for Cultural Heritage Sites: Roman City of Hierapolis

Abstract

Earthquakes have been responsible for the destruction of hundreds of monuments throughout human history.In this study, we tried to investigate the impact of historical and instrumental devastating earthquakes in the Roman city of Hierapolis which is one of the important cultural heritages located in the city of Denizli. In this study, the seismicity in the western Anatolian region from 7 September 2014 to 31 December 2020 was investigated to explore the b-value. The grabens in the region exhibit a low b-value with respect to the noticeable part of the Menderes Core Complex. Due to devastating earthquakes, vulnerable heritages like the Roman city of Hierapolis were seriously damaged. This paper describes the seismic behaviour of the Frontinus Gate and investigates the effects of the near field earthquakes. This analysis suggests that by using a simulating nonlinear approach it is possible to explore the seismic capacity of the historical monumental building governed by the flexural or shear failure and local overturning mechanisms. Based on the findings from this study, we can say that under a near field earthquake, increasing the vulnerability to out-of-plane failure, engineering should focus on reducing the seismic risk by adopting proper strengthening and reinforcing to prevent out-of-plane failure.

Key words
Dynamic analysis; numerical analysis; seismicity; the Roman City of Hierapoli