The new St. Paul's Hospital, currently under construction in Vancouver's False Creek Flats, is designed as a post-disaster facility in accordance with the 2019 Vancouver Building By-law. As it will play an essential role in the post-disaster response of the community, additional assessments beyond the requirements of the building code were conducted to better predict the post-earthquake performance of the facility. The assessment methodology as outlined in the FEMA P-58: Seismic Performance Assessment of Buildings was utilized to assess the facility's performance based on its specific site characteristics, structural and non-structural components, medical equipment, and occupancy. This paper presents an overview of two methods that were used to present and summarize the FEMA P-58 assessment's outputs to various stakeholders: I) Floor-by-floor breakdown of repair costs and repair times for various component groups, with emphasis on equipment crucial to post-earthquake functionality of the facility and 2) component-by-component damage state data breakdown translated from numbers into written statements. This information helped various technical and non-technical stakeholders to understand the impact of seismic damage and confirm/improve design decisions.
FEMA P-58 Seismic building performance assessment of the new St. Paul’s hospital
By Behrad Keshavarz and John Sherstobitoff
1 min read