Probabilistic Carbon Assessment of Post-Disaster Building Repairs using Pelicun-LCA

Published

May 15, 2026

Author(s)

Yating Zhang, Arpit Nema, Dustin Cook, Juan Fung, Siamak Sattar

Abstract

Pelicun is an open-source software package developed by the National Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure's (NHERI) Computational Modeling and Simulation Center (SimCenter) to evaluate building damage and losses resulting from natural hazards. Based on the Pelicun framework, we develop a Python library, Pelicun-LCA, which utilizes a hybrid method to probabilistically quantify carbon emissions associated with post-disaster building repairs. This report presents the technical details of Pelicun-LCA, including its three key features: detailed breakdowns of carbon emissions from building repairs, built-in design databases for various building archetypes, and parallel processing for cross-building comparisons. Eighteen design variants targeting different seismic performances are examined to demonstrate the capability of Pelicun-LCA. Finally, the potential applications and limitations of Pelicun-LCA are discussed to help users develop effective case studies.

Citation

Technical Note (NIST TN) - 2374

Report Number

2374

NIST Pub Series

Technical Note (NIST TN)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2374

Local Download

Keywords

Building repairs, embodied carbon, functional recovery, hybrid method, seismic resilience

Citation

Zhang, Y. , Nema, A. , Cook, D. , Fung, J. and Sattar, S. (2026), Probabilistic Carbon Assessment of Post-Disaster Building Repairs using Pelicun-LCA, Technical Note (NIST TN), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.2374, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960800 (Accessed May 16, 2026)

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