DOI: 10.17603/ds2-x4y9-2m13
title: Analytical dataset for quantification of direct benefits of functional recovery-based design for seismic resilience, in Economic Drivers for Functional Recovery of Multi-Storey Buildings

description: Lessons from recent major earthquake events have shown that current life-safety-centred seismic design practice falls short in ensuring a desirable post-hazard recovery. Recovery-based design has emerged as a new paradigm to ensure structural robustness and fast recovery of building function. However, functional recovery-based or low-damage design still requires a firm rational foundation in terms of its expected benefits relative to the additional cost that it incurs. This study aims to quantify the overall economic benefit of adopting functional recovery-based design through a whole-of-economy perspective. This requires four steps of analysis and simulation: 1. Seismic risk assessment to quantify direct losses and robustness, 2. Estimation of the pre-repair timeframe to account for the time that it takes to conduct such pre-requisite actions as financing and mobilization, 3. Estimation of utility infrastructure disruption duration that would inhibit restoration of function to individual buildings, and 4. Economic recovery simulation to quantify the overall economic impact and rapidity of the recovery process. The current literature on post-disaster economic assessment has largely used intensity measures to assess the level of initial disruptions/impacts and thus, has not yet taken advantage of more explicit metrics, such as damage and loss measures. Actual post-disaster environment has also not been properly captured by most economic models that force equilibrium at every time step, whereas the economy might be out-of-equilibrium for a long time. Furthermore, realized capacity of the construction industry to repair incurred damages has not been considered in modelling of the rate of recovery. This study aims to develop a dynamic equilibrium-seeking economic modelling framework that addresses these research gaps and considers expected demand surge phenomena and supply shortages in a post-disaster environment. This research helps to provide quantitative incentives and an evidence-based foundation for the adoption and development of low-damage design to achieve community seismic resilience objectives.
description: Abstract:
Lessons from recent major earthquake events have shown that current life-safety-centred seismic design practice falls short in ensuring a desirable post-hazard recovery. Extensive economic losses, high demolition rates, and long restoration periods have signified a gap between design targets and society’s expectations of seismic performance of code-compliant buildings. Recovery-based design has emerged as a new paradigm of performance-based earthquake engineering by ensuring structural robustness and fast recovery of building function. However, such a design still requires strong quantitative evidence of its expected socio-economic benefits and associated higher upfront costs. This paper aims to quantify direct benefits of a functional recovery-based or low-damage design. This is shown through three case-study reinforced concrete special moment-resisting frame building archetypes with various heights in Wellington, New Zealand. All building archetypes are designed once according to the current building standards and practices and once according to a low-damage design, which has a lower allowable maximum story drift and adopts several low-damage non-structural design alternatives. FEMA P-58 (FEMA, 2018a) and ATC-138 (ATC, 2021; Cook et al., 2022) frameworks are employed to quantify expected loss measures and recovery time of the building archetypes at both the current and low-damage designs, given four earthquake scenarios. The findings show a significantly enhanced seismic performance of the low-damage designed buildings. The reduction in expected repair cost, demolition rate, and functional recovery time of the low-damage designs given a 475-year earthquake is respectively 40-44%, 54-97%, and 44-62%. Moreover, using seismically pre-qualified non-structural components that are designed to a 50% higher seismic demand further reduces the expected functional recovery time by up to 28%. On the other hand, the estimated initial construction cost increases by a mere 2-5% for the low-damage designs. This research helps to provide quantitative incentives and an evidence-based foundation for the adoption and development of low-damage design to achieve post-earthquake functional recovery objectives.

Data user guide:
The data from this project can be used for detailed seismic risk assessment of reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame buildings in New Zealand (NZ). The project uses the Performance Assessment Calculation Tool (PACT) (FEMA, 2018b) and the SP3 software tool (Haselton Baker Risk Group, 2025) for its seismic risk and functionality assessments by employing the FEMA P-58 (FEMA, 2018a) and ATC-138 (ATC, 2021; Cook et al., 2022) frameworks. This includes several steps of analyses, namely hazard, response, damage, loss, and recovery analyses. The developed/employed models and the corresponding required inputs and outputs for each step can be found in the corresponding folders of the project dataset. These include the following:
•	Hazard curves for the four investigated earthquake scenarios from the new NZ National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) (GNS Science, 2022).
•	The three-dimensional (3D) finite element response model that is developed in this study. The response model is developed for modelling reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame buildings in the Open System for earthquake engineering simulation (OpenSees) analysis platform (McKenna, 1997).
•	Response analysis results of the building archetypes. Both static pushover and dynamic time-history analysis outputs as well as collapse assessment results are provided. The FEMA P695 (FEMA, 2009) far-field ground motion record set is employed for the time-history analyses. The record set is also provided in the data.
•	The damage fragility curves and loss consequence functions that are employed for the building components alongside component quantities at each building archetype.
•	Input data for the risk and recovery assessments, including structural inputs and population models.
•	Risk and recovery assessment final outputs, including probability distribution functions of seismic loss measures, i.e., repair cost, repair time, and casualty, as well as probability distribution functions of recovery time to reach reoccupancy, functional recovery, and full recovery performance states for all the building archetypes.
•	Several MATLAB codes to generate and process inputs and output data and run the nonlinear response analyses while employing parallel processing.
•	Design detailing of the building archetypes. These building archetypes were designed at a site in Wellington, NZ by Pledger et al. (2024) according to NZ Standards (NZS) 1170.5 (NZS, 2004).