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This paper introduces a new method for the assessment of reusability of components and structures of steel-framed buildings. It enables classification of various building parts and products through a procedure to calculate, weight and aggregate recyclability indicators and thus it helps to explore their potential to a second life. In connection with life cycle analysis (LCA), such an indicator provides valuable information for the Module D of the European standard EN 15804 and the Environmental Product Declarations. The method is applied on an existing typical industrial hall structure. Five different end-of-life scenarios were investigated for selected components, including recycling of the material as scrap, but also the careful deconstruction with components prepared for future reuse after cleaning, sorting, inspection and packaging. As an example, both cost and environmental burdens are compared in the life-cycle study of a selected girder. The results clearly show the significant reduction of environmental impacts achieved with reuse. However, we conclude that the reuse processes could be made more competitive with further reduction of life cycle costs. The higher reuse costs originate from the quality checks, manual work during deconstruction, storage and long transport distances. Adoption of cost effective deconstruction, sorting and inspection technologies can significantly improve the economic benefits in the studied reuse scenarios.

We propose a ground-motion prediction equation (GMPE) for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis of nuclear installations in Finland. We collected and archived the acceleration recordings of 77 earthquakes from seismic stations on very hard rock (VHR, i.e., the shear-wave velocity in the upper 30 m of the geological profile=2800  m/s according to the definition used in the nuclear industry) in Finland and Sweden since 2006 and computed the corresponding response spectra important for engineering evaluation. We augmented the narrow magnitude range of the local data by a subset of VHR recordings of 33 earthquakes from the Next Generation Attenuation for Central and Eastern North America (CENA) (NGA-East) database, mainly from eastern Canada. We adapted the backbone curves of the G16 equation proposed by Graizer (2016) for CENA. After the calibration, we evaluated the accuracy of the median prediction and the random error. We conclude that the GMPE developed can be used for predicting ground motions in Fennoscandia. Because of compatibility with the original G16 backbone curve and comparisons with the NGA-East GMPEs, we estimate that the formulation proposed is valid on VHR over the range of 2≤moment magnitude≤7.0 and 0≤ rupture distance ≤300  km, the depth range over 1.5–37 km, and frequencies between 1 and 100 Hz. The median of the composite prediction of the GMPE proposed was reasonable. The standard deviation of the prediction error (σ) was over the range of 0.73–0.86, in ln spectral acceleration units, for the relevant spectral frequencies. This is somewhat lower than the G16 σ, indicating lower aleatory variability. The new Fenno-G16 GMPE is applicable over a wider range of magnitudes than the two older GMPEs available in Finland and fits the data better, especially for peak ground acceleration and 25 Hz.