Unifying Assessments of Sustainability and Resilience in Civil Infrastructure Systems: The Case of Masonry Structures

Both sustainability and resilience considerations are important for infrastructure systems; however, there is a lack of single effective framework to unify sustainability and resilience, especially in context of building systems. The empirical literature also suggests very limited efforts that unify both aspects in a holistic manner, a challenge to accomplish in practice. This requires identification of critical indicators associated with sustainability and resilience. Careful assessments are required while exploring the different phases of infrastructure life cycle because they can reinforce or undermine each other. Along these lines of research, this study contributes a novel experimental framework to assess masonry structures and support the unified approach. Specifically, this study performed structural analysis for resilience assessment in masonry structures and energy simulation for sustainability. Based on the openings available in masonry walls, the study observed the changes in sustainability indicators, such as electricity consumption, due to space and water heating, and area lighting among others. Moreover, changes in resilience indicators such as story drifts in each floor were also observed. Results from sustainability assessment indicate that overall sustainability is compromised with additional openings in most cases (i.e., the building becomes less sustainable because of higher electricity energy consumption), except for electricity consumption for space heating. Results from resilience assessment show an increase in story drift of different floors with additional openings. It indicates that with additional openings, an unreinforced masonry building becomes more vulnerable. Moreover, differential effects (positive/negative correlations) were observed when concurrent assessments were made on sustainability and resilience indicators.