Evaluating the Variability in Functional Recovery Performance of Modern Buildings Across the United States

Published

July 9, 2024

Author(s)

Kristen Blowes, Carlos Molina-Hutt, Dustin Cook

Abstract

As building codes in the United States move toward the development of functional recovery provisions aimed at reducing recovery times following earthquakes, it is critical to benchmark how buildings designed following life-safety provisions perform in terms of new recovery-based performance metrics. In this study, the functional recovery performance of an 8-story reinforced concrete shear wall archetype, following current life-safety provisions, is evaluated in 34 cities across the United States. A risk assessment is conducted for functional recovery time, using functional recovery target times ranging from two weeks to two years. Two functional recovery proxies are also considered, one for nonstructural damage (i.e., damage to partitions) and one for safety-critical structural damage (i.e., red tags). The results are disaggregated by spectral acceleration to identify drivers of recovery risk. Results show that the risk of exceeding short recovery targets (i.e., recovery targets ranging from two weeks to one year) varies considerably across the 34 cities evaluated with current risk-targeting methods for collapse risk. The risk of exceeding long recovery targets (i.e., greater than one year) as well as the risk of incurring red tags, however, is more uniform for sites with high seismicity, with the exception of deterministically capped sites. Overall, this study highlights the need to consider design interventions to maximize the likelihood of achieving short recovery times and reduce the variability in functional recovery risk.

Conference Dates

June 30-July 5, 2024

Conference Location

Milan, IT

Conference Title

18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Functional Recovery, Risk-targeted ground motions

Citation

Blowes, K. , Molina-Hutt, C. and Cook, D. (2024), Evaluating the Variability in Functional Recovery Performance of Modern Buildings Across the United States, 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Milan, IT, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957287 (Accessed April 24, 2026)

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