Proposed Decision-Making Framework for the Risk Management of Publicly Owned Earthquake Prone Buildings

Previously developed seismic risk management frameworks generally aid decision makers in determining a specific retrofit strategy. In contrast, the decision-making framework (DMF) proposed herein is used to assist property portfolio managers to determine whether a particular building should be retrofitted in the first place as part of a more holistic facilities asset management planning process. A DMF was developed to help assist in such portfolio decision-making, which is necessary for governing agencies such as municipalities due to the size and diversity of their portfolios and to the need to have a semiobjective process in place to investigate and manage the seismic risk exposure of their portfolios in an efficient manner. The need for this standard decision-making process stems from growing regulations worldwide imposed on publicly owned facilities for risk reduction as well as the need to more efficiently allocate resources to manage large public service facility portfolios with limited budgets. Input criteria for the proposed DMF include heritage value, Council “appetite,” and financial costs. Based on other peer governing agencies’ seismic regulations and ordinances, these three major input criteria were further broken down into various subcomponents that can be incorporated into the DMF to guide decision makers to the most efficient mitigation option in a consistent and objective fashion. Four mitigation options may be pursued following the logic flow of the DMF: retrofit/strengthen, demolish/rebuild, sell/divest, and do nothing. Policies for “retrofit triggers” used by peer municipalities may also be imposed, and benchmarking was carried out against peer governing agencies in California, Oregon, Washington, and Massachusetts. It is recommended that the DMF proposed herein created using criteria deemed essential by its utilizing stakeholders be used for an initial sorting of a large number of properties; then benefit-cost analysis can be used to refine the sorting of buildings to most efficiently allocate resources. An example building in Auckland, New Zealand, was considered in the context of the proposed DMF, and the conclusion drawn for the example was to sell or divest the facility, representing a unique outcome relative to the available outputs of other existing seismic risk reduction programs.