Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Design: Quantifying the Benefits of a Holistic Design Approach

Recent discussions within the Sustainable Structural Engineering community have focused on the theoretical benefits that may be realized by designing structures with an enhanced level of resilience against natural and man-made disasters worldwide. These benefits may be realized using metrics that include all three pillars of sustainability: social, economic, and environmental. The authors have developed an analysis methodology that allows quantification of the benefits of performance-based seismic design in terms of the latter two pillars. This methodology involves a marriage between the sciences of seismic loss estimation and nvironmental life cycle assessment (LCA). On the loss estimation side, a HazUS-based approach is used. On the LCA side, an economic input-output approach is used. The benefits of using these approaches to meet the application objectives of the authors are discussed. A case study is presented that offers valuable lessons to the SE community in working toward improved design strategies that effectively minimize the potential environmental impacts of our buildings. Quantification of the benefits of these improved strategies allows the opportunity for the SE to contribute further to a project's LEED certification by pursuing Innovation & Design credits, an effort currently being undertaken by the authors that is discussed.