This manual extends the Instructions reported on page 4 of the form, with the aim of providing a tool for a correct training of the surveyors and for a full awareness of the principles of the form, as well as for the necessary homogeneity of judgment.
In Chapter 2, some information and guidelines on issues concerning the organisation of the damage and usability survey and the procedures for preparing and carrying out the building survey are given.
Chapter 3 provides a detailed description of each structural component, correlating it to the building component behaviour (thrusting or non thrusting roofs, masonry of good or bad quality, rigid or flexible floors, etc.). The layout of the data collection (i.e. of the form) relay on the personal opinion of the surveyor about the quality of the constructive components in the specific case under study. It is in fact possible that the manual does not consider a particular typology or that a given typology in a given area or in a specific building exhibits a seismic behaviour different from what can normally be expected, being it due to the maintenance state, or to the particular characteristics of a material used in that single case. For the general considerations expressed in the previous sections, the guidelines of section 4, concerning the damage survey of the main structural components (Chapter 4), are very wide and exhaustive.
Chapters 3 and 4 have many pictures and figures attached, respectively in the abacus of the construction typologies and in the examples of seismic damage. They offer an important reference inventory for the surveyor, that can help him in understanding the relationships between the observed reality and the descriptive synthesis operated when compiling the form. It is evident that a correct use of the form requires a complete understanding of the expected seismic behaviour of different structural components. This way, he can develop an independent ability in associating the typology to the behaviour, ability that he should use any time the encountered typology is not described in detail in the manual. An unquestionable advantage of this approach lies also in its didactic potentiality towards the inspectors. The need of giving in any case an opinion about each constructive component induces a global opinion about the building vulnerability which, associated to the damage assessment, produces a mature usability assessment (Chapter 5).