Integrated seismic and energy building classification

The existing building stock is responsible for non-renewable resource depletion, energy and material consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Life cycle analysis (LCA) procedures have thus been developed recently to quantify the environmental impact of construction and operational phases over the entire building’s life cycle. Furthermore, the economic, environmental, and social consequences of recent natural disasters have encouraged the integration of hazard-induced impacts into standard LCA procedures for buildings. Buildings are indeed expected to provide population with safe living and working conditions, even when hit by different types of hazards during their service life, such as earthquakes. This study presents a life cycle framework for a new integrated classification system for buildings and the identification of renovation strategies that lead to an optimal balance between increase of energy efficiency and reduction of seismic vulnerability, considering building’s life cycle economic and environmental impacts. Such a framework accounts indeed for the contributions of several building’s life cycle phases, including initial construction, operational energy consumption, earthquake-induced damage repair activities, potential retrofitting interventions, and demolition. In this way, the resilience of buildings against both natural hazards and climate change is addressed, while also improving the society awareness of the topic with the aim of prevention.