Financial Benefit of Retrofitting Seismic-Risk Buildings with Passive ControlDevices

摘要

A new decision-support model is developed for making well-informed retrofitdecisions in seismic-risk management of structures retrofitted with passive controldevices (PCD). Optimal design of passively damped structures in highly seismicenvironments requires not only choosing the most cost-effective approach from aseries of alternatives but also defining the risk associated with each retrofitalternative. Thus, unlike previous works in PCD optimization, the proposed decisionsupporttool uses multi-criteria genetic algorithm to maximize the overall economicbenefit of structural control system through different measures of risk that reflectsphysical and economical uncertainties, as well as the attitudes of decision makers.Risk measure characterizes the risk tolerance of the decision makers and allows theevolution of rational design or retrofit strategies that depend upon the level of riskaversion to low probability-high impact events. Through a review of different riskmeasures, a uniform and robust multi-criteria decision tool is created to:1.? provide a systematic and efficient approach for quantifying and evaluating thetrade-offs between key decision components (i.e., benefit, cost, performancelevel, and risk) and deciding on optimal design /retrofit alternatives, thereforesuggests a more efficient investment allocations for mitigation of existingstructures2.? enable a decision maker to more accurately assess how the risk preferencesaffect the overall design/retrofit alternativesBesides presenting an outline of the risk-based computational framework, thepaper includes numerical simulations to emphasize the financial benefits of usingpassive control devices to make retrofit decisions regarding seismic safety.