Risk Assessment and Retrofit of Existing Buildings

The structural risk assessment and evaluation process is broken into the steps of Develop knowledge of as-built conditions, Determine local response characteristics, Create mathematical model, Perform global analysis, Determine acceptability, and Select retrofit procedure/Classify per evaluation procedure and each step discussed. These steps, in general, are major topics of their own and only a few of the primary engineering issues that affect the state of the art in this area are included in this paper. The development of conceptual retrofit schemes is also discussed. Many aspects of earthquake engineering are directly related to risk assessment and retrofit, including performance based engineering, characterization of seismic hazard, performance of nonstructural systems, costs of retrofit, and public policy. These subjects and their relationship to risk assessment and retrofit are briefly described.