Simplified methodological approach for estimating the mean repair time of building portfolios directed to the development of seismic resilience policies, based on the distribution of resources

Abstract

Recovery from a catastrophic seismic event is dependent on multiple aspects involving resilience capacity. Disaster Risk Reduction management includes the development of policies focused on the preparedness to overcome the challenges associated with the response capacity in a post-disaster scenario, which contemplate the distribution of available resources to recover from the damaged state. This paper presents a simplified methodology to estimate the maximum repair time using the distribution of resources according to the workforce population available in a particular zone. The process involves two risk metrics: “average annual repair time” and the “workforce population capacity”, which in addition to the defined scenarios lead to its estimation based on the required size of a crew member as a simplified tool for policymakers to set threshold limits. Therefore, three case studies are presented to evaluate its applicability and sensitivity: (1) iterating a set of different intervention strategies directed to a single building typology of school buildings; (2) the effect of variating the story-height for the same archetypical building; and (3) the impact of variating the number and distribution of the crew members for a unique archetypical building. The results expose the efficiency of the method employing the risk metrics, as well as the sensitivity of the methodology through the simplified resilience index, using a threshold repair time. Finally, the outputs confirm the significant difference between the average annual repair time and the probable maximum repair time metrics within the presented case studies, which seriously affect the final threshold limits proposed by policymakers.