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Life-cycle cost and sustainability analysis of light-frame wood residential communities exposed to tornados

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Abstract

Tornadoes pose a significant threat to residential communities, causing enormous physical damage and losses to their social fabric. The dominant type of single-family residential buildings in the USA is light-frame wood construction, which is especially susceptible to tornado effects. Previous studies considering resilience of light-frame wood buildings have focused primarily on assessing damage, develo** damage functions, and exploring different repair methods. Studies related to sustainability have focused mainly on environmental impacts or carbon usage. Practically all of these studies have been geared to assessment of individual buildings. In this study, we couple resilience and sustainability to evaluate their tradeoffs or alignments at the community level from a life-cycle stance. The life-cycle cost and carbon footprint are reflected in the construction and repair of damages due to the tornado hazard, as well as regular repair and maintenance that occurs during the life of the residence. Uncertainties in the randomness in tornado occurrence, size of the tornado footprint, and variation in wind speed intensities within the tornado footprint, and capacities of the building structure and envelope play a significant role in building performance and are considered. We explore a number of repair strategies that might be adopted at the community level in decision-making and policy formulation for homeowners, home builders and community planners. These strategies provide a framework for integrating minimum cost and carbon footprint objectives in risk-informed decision-making, a topic that appears to be lacking in the literature.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 1452725. Additional support was provided by Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning, a Center of Excellence funded through a cooperative agreement between the US National Institute of Science and Technology and Colorado State University (NIST Financial Assistance Award Number: 70NANB15H044). The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the NSF, NIST and Colorado State University. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the NSF, NIST nor Colorado State University.

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  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA

    Pramodit Adhikari, Hussam N. Mahmoud & Bruce R. Ellingwood

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  1. Pramodit Adhikari
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Correspondence to Hussam N. Mahmoud.

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Appendix

Appendix

Three building archetypes were considered in the residential community in this study, as summarized in Fig. 2. The structural performance of these three archetypes under tornadic wind has been analyzed in detail by Maloney et al. (2018). We chose to focus on structural and nonstructural building components and systems, deferring the inclusion of home appliances and heating, ventilating and cooling systems for a later study. We assume that the initial home construction might involve a mix of standard and enhanced components. Accordingly, with two alternatives for each building product, being standard or enhanced, at total of 32 combinations of building construction options are possible and the decision alternatives in Figs. 7 and 8 are keyed to the combinations of these options in Table 5.

Table 5 Different combination of variables (building components)
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Adhikari, P., Mahmoud, H.N. & Ellingwood, B.R. Life-cycle cost and sustainability analysis of light-frame wood residential communities exposed to tornados. Nat Hazards 109, 523–544 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-04847-x

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