Life Cycle Cost Analysis of Seismic Reinforcement Plans

Owing to the aging of built environment, many cities are facing the increasing of disasters impact and risk. Reinforcing the existing buildings is one common strategy. This study aims to provide a reference for the reinforcement plan of private buildings through life cycle cost and benefit analysis from the perspective of the society as a whole. First, the seismic reinforcement strategies in different countries are reviewed for identifying suitable target buildings. The total annual earthquake loss related to the characteristics of building is assessed through the capacity spectrum method, fragility curves, and probabilistic seismic hazard analysis. The construction cost and reinforcement cost are estimated by historical data, and then the equivalent uniform annual cost method is used to analyze the life cycle cost of a certain reinforcement strategy. The privately owned buildings in Taipei City, Taiwan were analyzed to demonstrate the proposed method. The priority of reinforcement was determined by different vulnerability and risk measures of each building, and four different reinforcement strategies were compared in the case study. The results show that the proposed method can provide an objective reference for arranging the reinforcement order and economic-effectively reducing the impact of earthquakes on the whole community.