Rehabilitation decision‐making for buildings in the Wenchuan area

The disastrous Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 claimed around 100 000 lives and caused direct economic losses of around RMB 845.1 billion. The tragedy has also led to accusations regarding poor or inadequate seismic resistant capabilities of buildings. Seismic rehabilitation, which includes repairing and strengthening existing or damaged buildings, is required to reduce losses in any future earthquakes. It is difficult to determine an appropriate rehabilitation option, especially for subjective or emotional building owners, because of the rehabilitation costs and the probabilistic nature of earthquake occurrences. A decision‐making tree (DMT) model is proposed and constructed to help determine an economically feasible rehabilitation option. The required information, such as available rehabilitation options and costs, possible earthquake intensities and probabilities, possible damage, probabilities and loss of buildings is analysed and identified. Case analyses demonstrate the capability of the DMT model in making decisions on rehabilitation options for the buildings damaged during the Wenchuan earthquake, thus avoiding subjectivities or emotions.