Integrated analysis model for assessing CO₂ emissions, seismic performance, and costs of buildings through performance-based optimal seismic design with sustainability

An integrated sustainable seismic analysis model is developed to investigate the relationships of CO₂ emissions, the seismic performance, and material production costs of seismic design schemes of buildings. In this study, a green seismic analysis model is presented in the form of performance-based optimal seismic design with sustainability (PBODS) that considers the economic feasibility, environmental sustainability, and seismic performance of a building based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) data subject to various performance objectives prescribed in performance-based seismic engineering. This analysis model is applied to reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings, which comprise two heterogeneous materials—concrete and steel—that have different environmental impacts and thus have a high potential for CO₂ emission mitigation. In the PBODS method presented in this study, CO₂ emissions, material production costs, and the coefficient of variation (COV) of the inter-story drift ratio, which reflects the seismic performance, are set as the objective functions, and optimal designs that can minimize these three objective functions. The optimal designs for a 4-story and a 10-story RC buildings are then evaluated with respect to environmental sustainability, economic feasibility, and seismic performance using the presented integrated analysis model. Furthermore, the proposed model is used to quantitatively investigate the variations in CO₂ emissions and material production costs depending on variations in the performance objectives.