A resilience-based framework for design optimization of interdependent buildings

In performance-based design, design targets are established based on the performance needs of the buildings. However, buildings are seen in isolation and their interactions are oftentimes neglected in the design. In order to reduce the impact from future disasters, a more comprehensive planning of the built environment on a community level is needed, which should address the aspects of hazard preparedness and recovery from the disaster. Optimizing seismic designs of the inventory of buildings in a region based on community resilience would be an example of such effort. This paper intends to provide a simple and viable framework for resilience-based design optimization of interdependent buildings. Regional economic loss is used as a community-level objective in this study, where the functional interdependencies between different buildings in a community is explicitly considered. Artificial neural networks are used to approximate the seismic response of buildings for reducing the computational time in the optimization process. The framework has been illustrated with a case study of the design optimization of office and hospital buildings.