Assessment of Seismic Damage of Buildings and Related Environmental Impacts

Sustainable development studies have recently begun to consider damage loss attributable to natural hazards. A sustainable perspective on building design entails an understanding of a structure’s life-cycle environmental costs and consideration of the associated environmental impacts induced by natural hazards. Damage repair costs lead to additional material and energy consumption, creating harmful environmental impacts. Merging the results obtained from a natural hazard evaluation and related environmental impacts for buildings in seismically prone areas provides a novel outlook for sustainable design decisions. To evaluate the environmental impacts caused by buildings, the long-term effects accrued throughout a building’s lifetime and the effects associated with damage repair need to be quantified. A literature review and a proposed method for this type of analysis have been developed and are discussed. Using Athena and HAZUS-MH software, this study evaluated the performance of steel and concrete buildings by considering their life-cycle assessments and earthquake resistance. This study determined that code design level greatly affects building repair and damage estimations. This study presented two case-study buildings and found specific results using several assumptions. Future research recommendations were provided to make this methodology more useful in real-world applications. Examining the cost and environmental impacts of a building using a cradle-to-grave analysis and seismic damage assessment assists in reducing material consumption and construction activities before and after an earthquake event occurs.