Chapter 14: Assessment and strengthening of existing buildings

Inspection, assessment and strengthening of existing buildings requires judgement and experience (and perhaps also a certain amount of luck), and poses earthquake engineers with one of their most testing challenges.

This chapter covers

Even if all future new construction in seismic regions were built to conform to the best current standards (sadly, an unrealistic expectation), the existing stock of substandard construction would continue to pose a large risk for many decades. In mature economies, the rate of new construction is typically only around 1%, and although a much higher rate applies in many developing countries, the existing housing stock does not diminish very rapidly (Coburn and Spence, 2002). It would therefore take many years before all the substandard construction were replaced. In fact, the risk such buildings pose may increase for a number of reasons, including structural deterioration due to poor maintenance, weakening due to the removal of internal partitions to create larger room sizes, and further weakening if earthquakes occur and the resulting damage is not properly repaired.