Performance-Based Design of Residential Wood-Frame Buildings for Flood Based on Manageable Loss

Abstract

The Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers Committee on the Reliability-Based Design of Wood Structures recently completed a special project entitled “The next step for ASCE 16: Performance-based design of wood structures.” This paper presents the methodology and several illustrative examples of the design of residential wood-frame buildings for flood. The control variable of interest is losses in terms of either U.S. dollars or percent of construction costs. To do this, assembly-based vulnerability is coupled with existing durability data for wood and wood-based products; and when not available, logical assumptions were required. A series of illustrative examples are shown with various mitigation strategies applied to investigate the change in loss fragilities, and subsequently, economic risk if the fragility is recoupled with the flood hazard curve. The method is shown to work efficiently and the results are logical, thus it may find application by aiding developers, land-use planners, engineers, and potentially owners of wood-frame buildings in their design and retrofit decisions.