Building Back Better Following the 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake Sequence: Repair and Retrofit of Damaged Residential Reinforced Concrete High‐Rise Buildings

Earthquakes have caused, and will continue to cause, damage to the built environment, resulting in casualties, economic losses, and long‐term societal impacts. One approach to decreasing future losses is limiting the damage that buildings experience during an earthquake and speeding up their recovery by following the “build back better” principle. The main objective of this study is to contribute to such efforts by showing how a typical reinforced concrete (RC) high‐rise building that experienced severe damage due to the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence could be “built back better”. The main contributions of this study are: (1) better understanding of the main causes of the extensive RC building stock damage caused by the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence, (2) a simple, essentially‐elastic seismic analysis and design approach for repair and retrofit, that accounts for uncertainties in the characteristics of the existing structures and improves its seismic performance, and (3) a direct comparison of the cost of the proposed repair and retrofit design and the cost of replacing the damaged building with a new building, followed by a broader discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of the two postearthquake recovery options.