Quantification of Direct Benefits of Functional Recovery‐Based Design for Seismic Resilience

Lessons from recent major earthquakes have shown that current life‐safety‐centered seismic design practice falls short in ensuring a desirable post‐hazard recovery. Extensive economic losses, high demolition rates, and long recovery have signified a gap between design targets and society's expectations of seismic performance of code‐compliant buildings. Recovery‐based design has emerged as a new paradigm to ensure structural robustness and fast recovery of building functions. However, recovery‐based design still requires strong quantitative evidence of its socioeconomic benefits and associated upfront costs. This paper aims to quantify direct benefits of a functional recovery‐based or low‐damage seismic design (LDSD). This is shown through three case‐study reinforced concrete moment‐resisting frame building archetypes with various heights in Wellington, New Zealand. The building archetypes are first designed according to the current minimum standards and then with several LDSD solutions applied. The LDSD solutions consist of 1) adopting a lower design story drift limit, 2) using LDSD alternatives for partition walls, ceilings, and claddings, and 3) using seismically pre‐qualified acceleration‐sensitive non‐structural components that are designed to a 50% higher demand. This study also investigates the mitigating impacts of recovery planning measures. Seismic losses are quantified using the FEMA P‐58 framework under four shaking intensities with 43, 475, 950, and 2,475 years return periods; then, recovery time is assessed following the ATC‐138 framework, which builds upon FEMA P‐58 outputs. The findings show that collectively, the LDSD solutions and recovery planning measures lead to average 59% reduction in median repair cost, 81% reduction in demolition rate, and 71% reduction in median functional recovery time, given the 475‐year earthquake. On the other hand, direct cost implication of adopting a lower design drift is estimated at 2%–5%. This research helps to provide quantitative incentives and an evidence‐based foundation for the adoption and development of LDSD solutions to achieve functional recovery objectives.