Integrating Geosciences and Earthquake Engineering for the Conservation of Historic Monumental Buildings in Old Cairo: CoReng Perspective

The Religions Complex in Old Cairo, a crucial heritage site, demands immediate and informed conservation strategies. The Italy-Egypt “CoReng” project, in this sense, integrates geosciences and earthquake engineering skills to assess and mitigate the seismic risk for Old Cairo monuments. A key assumption to investigate their seismic vulnerability is represented by physics-based ground-motion simulations, to address the absence of local accelerograms. This is coupled with detailed Finite Element (FE) models for the examined historical structures, and in-field diagnostic experiments. This paper, in particular, focuses on the minaret of the Madrasa of Princess Tatar al Higaziya in Old Cairo, and applies CoReng strategy to this case-study structure. A refined 3D FE model of the minaret is developed in ABAQUS, and calibrated using dynamic identification techniques. Multiple seismic scenarios are simulated using physics-based accelerograms. The seismic analysis across various scenarios reveals the high vulnerability of the minaret to future seismic events, underscoring the need for continuos assessment and mitigation strategies. Notably, one of the simulated scenarios replicates the 1992 Cairo earthquake, and the structural analysis of the FE model subjected to this ground motion confirms the good behaviour of the minaret, as it was observed for the real structure during the historical event. This agreement serves as significant validation of both the developed FE model and the physics-based ground-motion simulation techniques, and confirms the potential of CoReng approach.