Seismic Risk Management Of An Elementary School Building Based On Minimum Expected Life-Cycle Cost

Abstract

In earthquake disaster prevention, one serious problem confronting the world's earthquake - prone countries is seismic performance of buildings. A building is expected to remain safe and provide its intended function throughout its life span, with only small performance interruptions or damage due to earthquakes.It is necessary to identify buildings that are in risk and carry out their reconstruction or seismic retrofit in order to provide more strength and ductility. However the seismic retrofits come to a premium. Therefore, seismic retrofit of buildings entails an important risk-management decision problem as an optimal balance between the cost for the reinforcement and the future risks that must be achieved.This paper presents a decision methodology in seismic risk management considering only one fundamental risk, the cost imposed on the decision maker. The risk is expressed as the expected life-cycle cost, which is the expected amount of payments during the life of the building. These include the initial costs of the design and its construction, the additional cost for the reinforcement and the expected cost of damages generated due to earthquakes during the life span of the building.As an example, the proposed methodology is applied to an actual school building newly designed in Lushnja. The seismic evaluation of building is realized through the Japanese seismic screening method for seismic safety evaluation of existing reinforced concrete buildings. The actual cost of existing building and the additional cost for strengthening by using shear walls are estimated. In this case study, it is examined the cost effectiveness of shear walls used for strengthening of the school building in reducing the life-cycle cost