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

Abstract

Review of existing literature on the unification of sustainability and resilience showed the lack of a single effective framework that can unify the two, especially for building systems. Along this line of research, this study contributes a novel experimental framework to assess masonry structures and support a unified approach. This study performed structural analysis for resilience assessment and energy simulation for sustainability assessment. Based on the openings available in masonry walls, the study observed the changes in sustainability indicators (electricity consumption). Changes in resilience indicators (story drifts) were also observed. Results indicate that overall sustainability is compromised with additional openings in most cases. However, in most cases, electricity consumption for space heating decreases with additional openings. Results from resilience assessment show an increase in story drift of different floors with additional openings. Such results indicate that with additional openings, an unreinforced masonry building becomes more vulnerable to the damages from the earthquake lateral loads. Moreover, differential effects (positive/negative correlations) were observed when concurrent assessments were made on sustainability and resilience indicators

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