# A Review of the Performance of Infilled RC Structures in Recent Earthquakes
## 3 Economic Losses Due to Earthquakes Related to the Infill Panels
The repair costs included building safety measures; demolition and removal, including transportation costs and landfill disposal; repair interventions; repair and finishing work relevant to strengthening intervention. The authors found that the damage index related to the infill panels reached values more excellent than those associated with the other components and observed that the number of storeys affected more the infill panels' damage than the seismic design of the structure. The authors concluded that the total repair cost for RC buildings is mainly affected by the damage to infill partitions and vertical structures. The authors pointed out that the demolition and reconstruction resulted economically more viable in 59 RC buildings out of 1500 of the dataset. However, the authors only provided the average cost estimation for demolition and reconstruction of private residential buildings damaged by the L'Aquila earthquake, which resulted in 1192 \(\upxi\)/m\({}^{2}\). The authors carried out the calculation of the rehabilitation costs of 59 buildings, in which the authors found a building repair cost ratio (the relationship between the actual repair costs and the building value) equal to 512 \(\upxi\)/m\({}^{2}\), however it is not mentioned that the costs explicitly related due to the infill panels. Later, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [37] carried out a study concerning the impact of the non-structural partition walls on building losses due to earthquake action, focusing on the potential contribution of non-structural retrofit solutions to reduce seismic losses. The authors developed a numerical study based on the analysis of six building configurations (3, 6 and 9 storeys with different infill panels) without seismic provisions. The seismic vulnerability safety assessment was then performed and correlated with the cost of implementing the selected retrofit solutions and the benefit achieved through the corresponding reduction of earthquake losses throughout the building's life cycle. From the study, the authors concluded that: (i) The decline in the annual economic losses achieved through non-structural retrofit, for structures with and without soft-storey, are similar, with a range of 10% to 40% of the annual economic losses of non-retrofitted structures; (ii) high-rise buildings without soft-storey are less affected by the implemented retrofits, in terms of the achieved reduction of annual economic losses. Recently, [PERSON] et al. [29] carried out research work to investigate the seismic losses due to masonry infills damage in RC structures after 2009 L'Aquila (Italy) earthquake, focusing on the dataset of 'lightly' damaged buildings, where only damage to masonry infills occurred. Based on the available data related to these buildings (a portion of the database collected by [PERSON] et al. [38]), the observed damage scenario after L'Aquila earthquake was first obtained. The repair costs for infills were estimated, given this damage scenario. The resulting estimated repair costs were then compared with the actual repair costs presented in the available literature. The authors used the damage scale based on AeDES form [39], which provides more details concerning the definition of each damage state, namely:  
* Grade D1 ('Slight') is a damage level for which small detachments (<1 mm) of the infill panels from the surrounding beams/columns can occur, with possible cracks (<1 mm width) due to the participation of the infill to the total lateral strength of the building. This damage level for infills can contribute to defining a 'low' damage level in the building unless there is a certain degree of risk of out-of-plane collapse due to the possible absence of connection between the panel and other structural components;
* Medium-severe damage state (D2-D3) corresponds to cracks (between 1 and 5 mm) due to detachment from the surrounding elements, diagonal cracks up to'some' millimetres, and a quite evident corner crushing with some localised bricks' expulsions.