Seismic repair and retrofit prioritization framework

Abstract

The 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquake sequence caused significant damage to the Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB) building stock. The extent of damage, post-earthquake changes to the seismic code, new legislation around earthquake-prone buildings, and ongoing changes to clinical service requirements created a challenging decision-making environment for capital works repair and retrofit. In this article, we present a framework designed to assess the seismic resilience of buildings from a holistic perspective and to determine appropriate levels of seismic retrofit. The framework design ensures that decisions are driven by building criticality in the context of a healthcare system. It helps users to balance life safety risk and the demands of delivering critical clinical services day to day: resulting in safe facilities that provide effective health services under a range of future conditions. Pilot application of the framework enabled the reprioritization of significant capital toward buildings that provide the most life safety and health service resilience benefits in the long term. The process and resulting framework from this project is applicable to a wider range of building owners navigating seismic retrofit decision-making and the emerging movement toward functional recovery–based building regulation.