Assessment of the loss of functionality of individual rooms in critical facilities after earthquakes

For important facilities, such as hospitals or schools, advanced seismic risk assessment methodologies have been developed and are now available for use by owners and facility managers. These include seismic hazard analysis coupled with structural and non-structural response and damage analyses leading to a final consequence analysis that provides indications of performance measures, which are often referred to as decision variables. Typical decision variables are repair costs, probability of collapse of the entire building and downtime. These decision variables do not provide specific information regarding the likelihood of individual rooms to remain functional after an earthquake. For the case of a hospital, for example, information regarding the functionality of specific critical rooms (e.g. operating or emergency rooms) could influence major design/retrofit decisions by the owner or facility manager. The main objective of this paper is to present, through a case study hospital building in Italy, a methodology for assessing the loss of functionality of individual rooms in critical facilities following an earthquake event. The methodology includes all the aspects that are usually considered individually in seismic risk assessment, such as ground motion selection for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, structural performance of the building, and the performance of non-structural elements that can affect the functionality of selected rooms.