Sustainable Life Cycle Management of Reinforced Concrete Buildings Through Evidence-Based Design Conformity Assessment in Türkiye

Türkiye’s high seismic hazard highlights the need for the sustainable management of existing reinforced concrete buildings that links safe service life decisions to traceable engineering evidence. This study proposes an integrated framework that distinguishes four independent assessment domains design/as built conformity, seismic performance, post-earthquake damage, and statutory risky building assessment while enabling them to share verified evidence without conflating their objectives or legal consequences. The framework integrates document review, geometric surveys, damage mapping, reinforcement investigation, non-destructive testing (NDT), core testing, soil–foundation investigation, and analytical model updating through a design field deviation and uncertainty matrix. Archived assessment records covered 20 anonymized public buildings, including a 16 building subset comprising 155 valid core test observations and Schmidt rebound hammer measurements at 164 structural locations. Core-based assessment strengths ranged from 6.37 to 15.55 MPa (mean = 10.32 MPa). Mean rebound number was positively associated with core-based assessment strength (Pearson’s r = 0.679; R2 = 0.461), although the building-level linear fit retained a residual error of 1.78 MPa. These findings support rebound testing for comparative screening, characterization of spatial variability, and sampling design, but not for direct strength assignment without representative core verification and a structure-specific relationship. The study contributes a staged investigation protocol, an operational deviation and uncertainty matrix, evidence to model rules, and a four-level OP/IO/LS/CP communication layer applied only after the relevant engineering assessment. The framework supports safe service life management and evidence-based strengthening or renewal decisions that may avoid unnecessary demolition and replacement material use without replacing established assessment procedures. The study does not perform an environmental life cycle assessment or validate the complete framework.