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

Summary

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

Series Title: NIST Special Publications

Personal Author: Fung, Juan F.

Publication Number: NIST special pub; NIST SP; 1277

Date Issued: 2022

Subject: Buildings
Earthquakes
Economics
Earthquake resistant design
Community resilience
Functionality
Functional recovery
Recovery-based design
Reoccupancy

Government Author: Commerce Department, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) .

Category: Executive Agency Publications

SuDoc Class Number: C 13.

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.