A Framework to Evaluate the Cost-Effectiveness of Recovery-Based Design

Published

May 24, 2022

Author(s)

Juan Fung, Yating Zhang, Katherine Johnson, Dustin Cook, Siamak Sattar

Abstract

Modern building codes and standards are generally focused on safeguarding public health and safety by ensuring buildings meet life safety performance objectives following an earthquake event. Certain classes of buildings, such as hospitals and schools, may be designed to a higher standard to minimize disruption. As communities target resilience of their built environment, it is becoming evident that life safety performance can nevertheless result in massive disruptions for large classes of residential and commercial buildings. It is possible to design buildings to provide more rapid restoration of reoccupancy and functionality than life safety standards. Recovery-based design is intended to support a community's post-earthquake resilience and represents an advancement in design practice. This report presents a framework to provide guidance on the economic benefits and costs of adopting functional recovery in design practice. A unique aspect of the framework is the acknowledgement that benefits from recovery-based design are distributed across various community stakeholders (e.g., residents, customers, local government), in addition to stakeholders at the building level (e.g., owners and tenants). Thus, the framework carefully details the attribution of impacts to the range of stakeholders potentially affected by improved building-design criteria. A key objective of the framework is to identify the set of potential benefits and costs, impacted stakeholders, and available data and tools for quantification. In the process, we identify gaps in measurement science for conducting a complete benefit-cost analysis. In addition, we provide a brief case study example that illustrates application of the framework.

Citation

Special Publication (NIST SP) - 1277

Report Number

1277

NIST Pub Series

Special Publication (NIST SP)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1277

Local Download

Keywords

Buildings, Community resilience, Earthquake, Economics, Functionality, Functional recovery, Recovery-based design, Reoccupancy

Citation

Fung, J. , Zhang, Y. , Johnson, K. , Cook, D. and Sattar, S. (2022), A Framework to Evaluate the Cost-Effectiveness of Recovery-Based Design, Special Publication (NIST SP), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1277, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=934308 (Accessed March 13, 2025)