Consideration of Post-Repair Performance in Seismic Loss Assessment of Structures

Abstract

Performance-based earthquake engineering is a methodology that allows for seismic assessment of structures in terms of decision variables that are most important to stakeholders. However, currently, this approach does not facilitate consideration of changes in structural behavior if the structure is repaired, and, hence, cannot be used to compare service life performance differences between the different repair strategies. This study develops and illustrates a probabilistic seismic loss assessment framework that explicitly considers structural post-repair performance and examines the implications of the selected repair strategies over remaining service life of the structure after an earthquake. The proposed framework uses the Monte Carlo method to simulate many service life scenarios of a structure that are consistent with site-specific seismic hazard. For each of these scenarios, expected losses are calculated, considering changes in the performance of the structure if previous earthquake in the scenario warrants extensive repair that changes structural behavior. The framework is applied to two reinforced concrete bridges to illustrate its application.