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Recent earthquakes in Pakistan demonstrated that the region is highly seismic. Masonry buildings constructed with stones, concrete blocks, and fired-clay bricks and concrete buildings were damaged during the 8 October 2005 Kashmir earthquake. This paper presents the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete and masonry buildings in northern part of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Kashmir during the earthquake. Most of the buildings were observed to be nonengineered or semi-engineered. The paper presents an overview of the 1937 Quetta building code and the 1986 and 2007 building codes of Pakistan. Lessons learned during the earthquake are also presented.

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This paper presents an experimental study on the performance of a full-scale unreinforced brick masonry (URM) building system tested under quasi-static loading at the Earthquake Engineering Centre, University of Engineering and Technology in Peshawar, Pakistan. The configuration and materials used in the single-story URM building are typical of those found in the northern areas of Pakistan affected by the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. This study is a part of ongoing research for the earthquake impact assessment of the city of Abbottabad. Combined shear and flexural behavior was observed during the test. The experimental data was analyzed and is presented in the form of force-deformation hysteresis loops and envelope curves. Based on the measured data, different performance levels have been established. The measured response of the test structure is also compared to the estimated response obtained using three capacity evaluation procedures and the two are found to be in good agreement.

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Rubble-stone masonry structures are found abundantly in the Asian countries along the Himalayan range. Such structures are usually constructed in dry-stone masonry or are constructed in mud mortar, which makes them susceptible to damage and collapse in earthquakes. In order to study the seismic behavior of these structures, dynamic shake table tests on three reduced-scale rubble-stone masonry models were conducted. The models comprised a representative school building, a residential building, and a model incorporating simple cost-effective features in the form of horizontal and vertical reinforced concrete elements. This paper presents the results of shake table tests carried out on rubble-stone masonry buildings including: damage pattern, capacity curves, damage limit states, and response modification factors of these structures. Test data indicates that seismic performance of rubble-stone masonry structures can be significantly improved by incorporating cost-effective features such as vertical members and relatively thin horizontal bands.