Toward functional recovery performance in the seismic design of modern tall buildings

Abstract

Current building code requirements for seismic design are primarily intended to minimize life-safety risks due to structural damage under extreme earthquakes. While tall buildings designed under current standards are expected to achieve the life-safety goal, this study estimates that they may require up to 7.5 months of repair to return to functionality after a design-level earthquake (roughly equivalent to ground motion shaking with a 10% probability of exceedance in 50 years), and over 1 year after a risk-targeted maximum considered earthquake (roughly equivalent to ground motion shaking with a 2%–4% chance of exceedance in 50 years). These long downtimes, which correspond to median predictions, far exceed recovery goals for major employers and other recovery-critical uses and can have disproportionately harmful effects on businesses and residents. To address such extensive downtime risks, we evaluate the impact of recovery-based design guidelines for reducing recovery times through (1) more stringent drift limits under expected ground motions and (2) measures to mitigate externalities that impede recovery. The results suggest that by combining these strategies, expected recovery times following a design-level earthquake can be reduced to roughly 1 month, and to 2 months following a risk-targeted maximum considered earthquake. These findings are illustrated for an archetype 42-story reinforced concrete shear wall residential building and a 40-story steel buckling-restrained braced frame office building in San Francisco, CA.