Loss estimation of tall buildings designed for the PEER tall building initiative project

Abstract

As part of the PEER Center's Tall Building Initiative (TBI) project, practicing engineers designed three structural systems, each based on commonly used codes and guidelines, in addition to the guidelines developed by PEER. The designs were analyzed by three research teams, using a set of 75 ground-motion pairs, to predict response parameters for evaluating the performance of tall buildings. This study focuses on analytically estimating the seismic losses to these buildings to assess their relative seismic performance. The loss assessment process follows a comprehensive simulation approach that takes into account several random variables, such as building response, repair costs, etc. Throughout this study, epistemic and aleatory uncertainties in the random variables are accounted for in order to quantify those in loss estimates. Based on the dollar-loss results, the performance of the dual-system building is compared and contrasted with that of the other building systems considered in the PEER study.