The 3rd International Conference on Earthquake Engineering and Disaster Mitigation 2016 (ICEEDM-III 2016)

Defining Cost-Effective Strategies for Safety Upgrading of School

Buildings at Regional Scale in Seismic Prone Areas.
*
Stefano Grimaza
a
SPRINT-Lab - Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture - University of Udine. 33100 Udine. Italy

Abstract
In a seismic territory, one of the concerns of the public administrators is to guarantee people safety in case of an
earthquake occurrence, in particular in school buildings. Public administrations are facing a complex problem and they
need to answer the following questions: what school must be adequate first? Why? What typologies of intervention are
necessary? What level of safety is possible to reach? What is the cost of retrofitting? How many interventions can be
managed with the available resources? These questions point out that the definition of a rational and effective strategy for
the mitigation of seismic risk implies the necessity to know the level of risk and the criticalities of each building together
with the required countermeasures and their costs. All this knowledge permits to carry out an evaluation of the needed
economical effort in terms of necessary global financial amount and, consequently, allows the definition of the
practicable strategies for risk mitigation. This paper argues on how an approach based on a technical triage represents a
useful and cost-effective tool for obtaining decision-making supports in defining rational and comprehensive strategies of
seismic risk mitigation.

Keywords: Technical triage, seismic risk; safey upgrading; resources allocation; schools; decision makers.

1. INTRODUCTION

The main earthquakes occurred worldwide in the last decade highly affected school facilities, killing or hurting
students, teachers and educational personnel, with severe consequences on the education system. More than 280 schools
were damaged by the earthquake that hit Ecuador on 16 April 2016, leaving up to 120,000 children temporarily without
education [1]. According to the Education Department of Nepal more than 575 schools were destroyed and 969 schools
sustained damages in 36 districts in the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Nepal on 24 April 2015 and its aftershocks. Luckily,
there were not many human casualties in these buildings as the earthquake struck on a public holiday (Saturday), but
more than 25,000 classrooms were destroyed or unsafe. During the 2010 Haiti earthquake, some 38,000 students and
1,300 teachers and educational personnel died, and almost 4,200 school facilities, as well as the Ministry of Education
building were destroyed or damaged [2]. During the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China, approximately 10,000 students
died in their classrooms and more than 7,000 schoolrooms collapsed [3].

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0432 558731; Fax.: +39 0432 558734.
E-mail address: stefano.grimaz@uniud.it
 These severe consequences highlight the necessity to take into particular consideration the safety of school buildings in
the programs of disaster risk reduction regarding earthquake prone areas.

2. SAFETY UPGRADING STRATEGIES AT REGIONAL LEVEL

The safety of schools is a relevant concern for administrators and decision-makers, and, generally, also open
methodological questions within the scientific world. As a matter of fact, the definition of a proper strategy for managing
the problem at regional level is fundamental and requires a pragmatic and rational approach being able to take into
account the limitations in terms of time, resources, and capabilities.
In an ideal world, there would be enough money and time to upgrade the safety level of everything, but unfortunately,
in real life the decision makers are faced with a growing list of schools and limited resources. Therefore, especially with
reference to the existent schools, it should be essential that scarce resources will be allocated for maximizing the safety
of the greatest number of schools.
In practical terms, in order to settle proper risk reduction strategies for a large number of school buildings, decision-
makers should to know:
 the number of the school facilities they are dealing with;
 the potential criticalities associated to each school facility;
 an overall evaluation of safety conditions (i.e. a synthetic judgment) for each school facility;
 the esteemed intervention needs and the associated costs;
 the effectiveness of interventions within a comprehensive evaluation of safety.

A meaningful difference exists between the cases of new constructions and existent buildings. As far as new
constructions are concerned, seismic codes and a rational control of the process of construction permit to build new
schools meeting the requested standards. Instead, the existent schools require a quick preliminary assessment in order to
evaluate the safety conditions, identify the weaknesses and the intervention needs together with the cost of safety
upgrading. An evaluation of convenience is also important so as to decide if it is more cost-effective to proceed with
upgrading interventions or with reconstruction. Therefore, the decision makers have to face a problem not only of
technical but also of economical nature. Moreover, the assessment criteria should be uniform and comparable thus
facilitating the planning of intervention strategies on a large number of schools. In other terms, decision makers have to
decide where to allocate resources for achieving specific goals using common, and as much as possible, rational and
quick criteria.

3. TECHNICAL TRIAGE FOR DEFINING THE STRATEGIES OF SAFER SCHOOLS AT

REGIONAL SCALE

From the decision maker prospective, safety upgrading strategy could be seen as a process of resource allocation.
Efficient resources allocation relies upon the definition of clear goals and actions to achieve an acceptable safety level.
The process can be split in two parts:
 explicit definition of the goals;
 right allocation of resources.

A preliminary definition of safety of a building is necessary. Currently, the most largely adopted approach is the
performance-based criterion, relating safety to a specific damage state in the case of occurrence of the hazard of
reference [13]. An example is illustrated in Table 1.
More generally, for evaluating life safety performance, the assessment of safety requires the identification of all the
elements that could potentially cause injury or death.
A second question related to the goals, in the definition of strategies of safety upgrading of schools, is if we have to
consider only a specific hazard (i.e. earthquake) or all the hazards that can affect the building.
A proper estimation of the performance requires the identification and definition of the entire hazard set of reference.
Consequently, in a multi-hazard prone area, the right allocation of resources could require an evaluation in terms of
performance for more hazard using, if possible, a common multi-hazard assessment approach. In terms of rational use of
resources, a multi-hazard assessment is preferable, even when the goal is only the seismic safety upgrading.
 Table 1. Performance levels and correspondent Damage states
Performance level Damage state
Fully operational Continuous service.
Negligible structural and non-structural damage
Most operations and functions can resume immediately. Safe
structure for occupancy. Essential operations protected, non-
Operational essential operations disrupted. Repair required to restore some
non-essential services. Light damage.
Moderate damage. Structure remains stable. Selected building
systems, features or contents may be protected from damage. Life
Life Safety safety is generally protected. Building may be evacuated
following earthquake. Possible repair, but it may be economically
impractical.
Severe damage, but prevented structural collapse. Non-structural
Near Collapse
elements may fall.

A possible solution is the adoption of a technical triage approach. Triage is a process largely used in medicine for a
quick prioritization of patient treatments. Triage derives from the French word “trier” meaning “to sort”. It is a process
of prioritization taking into account different issues, even of different nature. Conceptually, the triage is a mission-
oriented process where decisions must be made in a short time without complete information and with constrains of
available resources. Hence, technical triage for safety upgrading is the process of prioritizing the allocation of limited
resources to maximize safety returns, relatively to specific safety goals, and under a constrained budget. This is achieved
by explicitly accounting for the costs, benefits and likelihood of success of alternative safety actions (no intervention,
retrofitting, reconstruction, re-localization).
Decision making process based on the principles of triage provides a defensible, rational and repeatable approach to
prioritizing safety investments and allows motivations of the choices and actions.
The rational process to allocate resources, based on principles of triage, produces greater awareness of trade-offs and
will lead to more strategic and defensible outcomes and potentially heightened public confidence and stakeholders buy-in
(stakeholder buy-in is the process of involving these people in the decision-making process in hopes of reaching a
broader consensus on the organization's future).

4. SEISMIC SAFETY ISSUES AND VISUS TECHNICAL TRIAGE

Considering building safety and life safety performance, it is essential to take into account all the elements that can
cause deaths or injuries in case of occurrence of adverse events (hazards). In the VISUS method, five main issues are
identified in order to allow the check of all the critical states, that are: site, structural (global and local), non structural
and functional weaknesses. The presence of site criticalities (unstable conditions) implies the need to evaluate the
opportunity of retrofitting the building or to move it to another stable site. The global and local structural characteristics
focus the attention on the values of the seismic resistance of the building and of its parts (like walls, roof, slabs, etc.).
Non-structural characteristics synthesize the potential problems connected with the presence of non-structural elements
that can fall or, generally, can create injuries or deaths (e.g., false ceilings, bookcases, chimneys, etc.). Also an evaluation
of the egress system is provided, since also the possibility of leaving the building easily is a fundamental aspect for the
seismic safety evaluation.
The results from this assessment (see Fig. 1) are shown using a “rose of intervention needs” with five needles which
synthesize and simply identify the main criticalities of the school building according to the evaluation of the five
criticalities previously defined (site, global structural, local structural, non-structural, and functional weaknesses). The
presence of one or more needles in the rose implies the presence of potential criticalities in the school building, while a
rose without any needle implies that the building satisfies the goal of people safety. The length of the needle identifies
the level of warning (high - long needle; moderate - short needle).
 Fig. 1. VISUS safety indicators. Rose of intervention needs (on the left) and Safety stars (on the right)

Then a specific number of stars is assigned, taking into account the assessed condition of the school, using criteria
directly associated with the safety performance meaning (i.e. three stars correspond to the life safety level). VISUS
provides information collected by direct inspections in the field with specific survey forms. The result of VISUS
assessment is a report on school safety with the suggested actions (no intervention, repair or stabilization, retrofit or
replacement) and the related range of cost and convenience. A collective report is also produced in order to facilitate a
more effective definition of a seismic risk mitigation strategy at a territorial scale [10][11][14]. Fig.2 shows, as example,
the outcomes of the ASSESS Project in Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (N-E of Italy). The outcomes were used by decision
makers for the definition of the strategies for disaster risk reduction.

Fig. 2. Outcomes of VISUS technical triage in the ASSESS project [14].

(a) map of schools assessed (Friuli Venezia Giulia Region N-E of Italy); (b) individual reports; (c) extract of collective report
5. PILOT PROJECTS

The VISUS methodology was firstly adopted in 2010-2011 during the ASSESS project [14] for studying the seismic
risk of school facilities of more than 1,000 schools in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region (North-Eastern Italy).
Subsequently, UNESCO adopted the VISUS methodology for the quick assessment of school facilities during a pilot
project in El Salvador. After a short (24 hours) course, 15 university students (5th year - faculty of civil engineering at
the University of El Salvador) were trained. In ten days, the students analyzed 100 schools (Fig. 3a), in the departments
of La Libertad (costal area), La Paz (rural area, mountain area), and San Salvador (urban area) [10]. In 2015 two Pilot
projects were carried out, in Lao PDR on 10 schools (Fig. 3b) and in Indonesia on 60 schools for testing the extension of
VISUS methodology with multi-hazard assessment. This required adapting the tool to entirely new building types and
hazards – including floods, tsunamis and high winds, fire and ordinary use.

a) b)

Fig. 3. VISUS assessment maps with the safety stars assigned to each school assessed. (a) El Salvador Pilot Project – seismic
hazard: 100 schools assessed; (b) Lao Pilot Poject – multihazard: 10 schools assessed.

The Indonesian pilot project was implemented with the collaboration of the ITB of Bandung. More than 30 surveyors,
trained in three days at the ITB, managed the surveys in Bandung area and in the coastal area (South of Central Java).
Taking into account the results of the pilot projects the methodology has been refined and optimized. An assessment
of more than 100 schools is currently planned in Ambon and Palu (Indonesia) adopting the multi-hazard approach.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The results and experience gained during the pilot projects suggest some concluding remarks:
 all the projects have emphasized the importance of a holistic, multidisciplinary, and triage approach suitable to
manage a huge amount of information of different nature;
 the seismic safety of people is fundamental and strategic, especially when considering buildings of great social
importance;
 the communication of scientific results to end users (mainly public administrators) is a fundamental but delicate issue
and the definition of appropriate indicators of synthesis, also graphic, can play a decisive impact in communication;
 the set of indicators should guide the development of lists of priority actions defined according to different political
and administrative criteria;
 the indicators should take into account all the factors that contribute to the definition of risk: the five needles of the
rose of warning and the criteria for the assignment of the safety stars allow one to consider all aspects of seismic risk
and to evaluate the suggested interventions addressing efficiently the available resources.
 Finally, all the projects highlight that the seismic safety is one of the main issues of the evaluation but evidenced that a
cost-effective definition of the strategies for seismic safety upgrading should take into account also the situation referred
to other hazards affecting the area. In all applications, the VISUS technical triage approach is resulted a good solution for
defining cost-effective strategies for safety upgrading of school buildings at regional scale in seismic prone areas.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Author would like to thank the colleagues of UNESCO headquarter, Alexandros Makarigakis and Jair Torres and
of UNESCO Jakarta office, Ardito Kodijat for believing in the VISUS methodology and for supporting its application in
different countries. Thanks are also due to professor Edgar Peña of the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture of
Salvador University, Marla Petal of Save the Children and professor Krishna S. Pribadi of the ITB of Bandung,
Indonesia, for their precious support and help in the implementation on field and suggestion for the improvement of the
VISUS methodology.

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