EVALUATING STRUCTURAL RESILIENCY OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS AS EMERGENCY SHELTERS IN NATURAL DISASTERS

Abstract

Public schools are the second largest sector of public infrastructure spending following highways, and there are about 84,000 public schools with 100,000 buildings in the United States. In addition to their primary functions as learning facilities, public schools usually serve an important role as emergency shelters and community resilience hubs during and after natural disasters, such as earthquake, windstorm, and flooding. In order to effectively fulfill the secondary function as emergency shelters, the school infrastructures need to be operational during and after the disasters. However, there are gaps between the existing school building structural capacities and the requirements of essential buildings as emergency shelters. In this paper, a generic 3-story steel framing K-12 school building will be analyzed based on the design loads and load combinations specified in ASCE-7: Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures. The design loads in ASCE-7 are continuously updated to address the climate changes and new challenges, which will be reflected in the analysis to compare the building design criteria and structural capacities from the past two decades. The structural capacity will be evaluated as an emergency shelter/public assembly (Risk Category IV) during and post disasters, versus a regular school building (Risk Category II or III). Full live loads will be combined with the natural disaster loads to evaluate the school building capacity as a community resiliency hub. The results will be used to assess the structural resilience level of school buildings functioning as emergency shelters in natural disasters.