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– Structural reliability of buildings has become an important issue after the collapse of a shopping centre in Riga 21.11.2013, caused the death of 54 people. The reliability of a building is the practice of designing, constructing, operating, maintaining and removing buildings in ways that ensure maintained health, ward suffered injuries or death due to use of the building. Evaluation and improvement of existing buildings is becoming more and more important. For a large part of existing buildings, the design life has been reached or will be reached in the near future. The structures of these buildings need to be reassessed in order to find out whether the safety requirements are met. The safety requirements provided by the Eurocodes are a starting point for the assessment of safety. However, it would be uneconomical to require all existing buildings and structures to comply fully with these new codes and corresponding safety levels, therefore the assessment of existing buildings differs with each design situation. This case study describes the simple and practical procedure of determination of minimal reliability index β of existing steel structures designed by different codes than Eurocodes and allows to reassess the actual safety level of different structural elements of existing buildings under design load.

The Thesis has developed a methodology for evaluating the reliability level of buildings in use. The overall reliability of the building is characterized by the global reliability index which allows to quantify and compare the reliability levels of different buildings and, depending on the type of use of the building, determine the lowest permissible level. New methods have been developed in the work – the method of quantitative risk classification of buildings and the method for determining the reliability level of individual structural elements in operation. A large-scale study on the state of existing public buildings in Latvia has also been conducted and the practice of building inspection during operation in Europe has been analysed.

Promocijas darba gaitā radīta metodoloģija ekspluatācijā esošu ēku drošuma līmeņa vērtēšanai. Ēkas kopējais drošums tiek raksturots ar globālo drošuma indeksu, kas ļauj kvantificēt un salīdzināt dažādu ēku drošuma līmeņus un atkarībā no ēkas lietošanas veida noteikt zemāko pieļaujamo. Izstrādātas arī vairākas jaunas metodes – ēku kvantitatīvā risku klasificēšanas metode, kā arī metode atsevišķu ekspluatācijā esošu konstrukciju elementu drošuma līmeņa noteikšanai. Promocijas darbā ietverts arī apjomīgs pētījums par esošo publisko ēku stāvokli Latvijā, kā arī analizēta ekspluatācijā esošu būvju vērtēšanas prakse Eiropā.