An Integrated Method to Evaluate Sustainability for Vulnerable Buildings Addressing Life Cycle Embodied Impacts and Resource Use

Abstract

The vulnerability of buildings faces further scrutiny as gaps in design, construction, operation, and maintenance remain. Although there has been noticeable progress in the field, the frequency and magnitude of building damage during natural events highlight the fact that sustainable infrastructure has not yet reached all targets. In this study, sustainability aspects of vulnerable buildings are revisited to propose more robust measures to prevent damage and a lack of functionality. Those measured are underpinned by the merging of environmental and structural sustainability for one novel integrated approach. The method devises structural intervention scenarios based on damage levels and service period. It also aims at reducing resource use and embodied impacts through the discretization of standard life cycle analysis into customized stages. The integrated method to evaluate sustainability is tested on two vulnerable buildings in Turkey and Mexico, built with different codes of practice and having experienced low to medium damage during severe earthquake events. Research findings indicate that although embodied impacts form a minor part of the building life cycle environmental impacts, sustainable structural interventions can further reduce both embodied impacts and demands on natural resources. Hence strengthening vulnerable buildings can provide an advantage to help the sustainable transformation of cities.

Aligning sustainability and regional earthquake hazard mitigation planning: integrating greenhouse gas emissions and vertical equity

“…It is implemented for the first time at a regional scale using prototype buildings to represent the large number of building types and sizes in the entire building stock. Results confirm the findings of previous studies (Comber et al 2012, Chiu et al 2013, Wei et al 2015, 2016, Sassu et al 2017, Bostenaru Dan 2018, Gkournelos et al 2019, Caruso et al 2020, 2021b, Keskin et al 2021 that negative environmental impacts mitigated by retrofitting can outweigh the expenditures for the retrofit itself. Hence, the significance of pre-event hazard mitigation is highlighted in both economic and environmental terms.…”

“…Furthermore, the potential energy savings might lead to cost savings for the impacted households. Although the benefits of integrated seismic and energy building retrofit interventions have been reported in the literature (Belleri and Marini 2016, Calvi et al 2016, Sassu et al 2017, Welsh-Huggins and Liel 2017, Lamperti Tornaghi et al 2018, Gkournelos et al 2019, Asadi et al 2020, Caruso et al 2020, 2021a, 2021b, Keskin et al 2021, Menna et al 2021, the energy savings due to energy efficiency improvements have not been considered in previous resource allocation frameworks for regional risk mitigation.…”