Seattle has developed and proposed a mandatory retrofit policy for unreinforced masonry buildings (URM). This paper describes the City's benefit cost analysis (Seattle DPD, 2014) that finds that the policy, once adopted, would significantly reduce damage, injuries, and fatalities. It also finds that the policy benefits are not economical relative to their costs. Benefits range from $4 to $14.50 for every $100 in cost. If the policy is adopted, URM building owners' options will range from retrofitting the existing building, demolishing the URM building and constructing a new building (resulting in presumably higher rents), demolishing the URM and leaving an empty lot, or deferring compliance as long as possible. The authors of this paper performed seismic upgrade case studies on a few existing URM buildings to evaluate the effects of the City's proposed policy. The outcome of these case studies are presented here within.
展开▼
