How to Set Earthquake Performance Goals

How to Set Earthquake Performance Goals

When it comes to earthquake performance goals, you can just follow the “code”, for example, for those in the Bay Area, the CBSC, IBC, and local building regulations. However, for most buildings, these “codes” aren’t good enough performance goals.

The reason for this is that these codes are designed to stop building collapse. At first glance, they seem great; however, they do not account for function preservation or minimal financial loss in such events. This goes unaccounted for.

As a result, property owners need to come up with real earthquake performance goals, which, normally, require additional seismic protection. These goals should be specific to your building, such as its activities, occupants, contents, recovery needs, and financial considerations.

What Really Matters to You?

Simply, earthquake/seismic performance goals should reflect your priorities. Codes may save your building from collapse and limit fatalities. Goals, on the other hand, help reduce downtime, protect a building’s internal infrastructure, etc.

For example, imagine you own a hospital. With such buildings, you want to limit or eliminate downtime. This means you want to protect the building as well as its contents. If the contents are damaged, like fire sprinklers, etc., it may need to be shut down until repaired.

Now, let’s say you had a warehouse. Of course, you don’t want this to collapse, but you may accept downtime a little more. At the end of the day, it’s less life-threatening if a warehouse cannot re-begin work for a few days, weeks, etc.

This makes the question, “What really matters to me?”, very important. Before creating any performance goals, you need to repeat this. By asking yourself such a question, you’ll be able to create a performance-based seismic design specific to your goals and situation.

Key Questions to Guide Your Performance Goals

When establishing earthquake performance goals for your building, it helps to break down the problem into a few key areas:

• Activities in the Building
• Occupants and Contents
• Post-Earthquake Recovery Needs
• Financial Considerations

Activities in the Building

• What is the building used for, and which functions are mission-critical? Identify the primary activities that happen in the facility that are deemed essential to your business or mission (for example, operations that impact your revenue, reputation, or anything that cannot be moved elsewhere)
• How would an earthquake disrupt those activities? Consider how damage or loss of utilities, like power, water, gas, internet, etc., could impact your essential operations. You should also think about how costly or difficult it would be to relocate or how long you could survive if the operations were to stop.

Occupants and Contents

• Who uses the building, and are any occupants especially vulnerable? Think about how many people are in the building and who is in the building. Particularly vulnerable individuals, like children, the elderly, and those with limited mobility, will need extra protection.
• What valuable contents or equipment are inside? For example, specialized machinery, servers, research samples, artwork, archives, etc. The best way to answer this question is to think about how hard (or costly) it would be to repair or replace certain items if they were to become damaged.
• Are there hazardous materials present? These types of materials could present serious health or environmental risks. Consider what materials may need additional protection to prevent the spillage or release of such chemicals.
• What if people can’t access the building? If your staff or residents cannot enter the facility for days, weeks, and maybe even months, what would be the consequence? Would it prevent them from doing their jobs, accessing important materials they need, etc.?

Post-Earthquake Recovery Needs

• How quickly do you need to resume operations? Determine what’s at stake if your building is unusable for an extended period of time. If you can only handle minimal interruption, your performance goals should reflect that.
• Is the building needed immediately after a quake? If your building is required immediately after seismic activity, for example, any emergency response building, this will massively increase the required performance level.
• Will people shelter on-site? Consider what occupants, staff, or community members may rely on if they can no longer use this building for shelter. What would be the steps to ensure they have shelter until the building is deemed safe again?

Financial Considerations

• What financial losses are you willing to tolerate? On average, an earthquake can cause around $4.4 billion in damage. Therefore, you need to think about the economic impact that can come along with disrupted operations and how much you can handle.
• Could the building be a total loss? In a worst-case scenario, a very heavily damaged building may need to be demolished. Could you handle this? What would the impact be on your operations and financial well-being?
• Do you have funds to repair quickly? After an earthquake, having the liquidity (or insurance payouts) to start repairs as soon as possible is crucial. If you know resources may be tight, designing for higher performance may be wise.
• What about reputation and liability? You should also consider less tangible costs. For example, if your building gets red-tagged, how would that affect your organization’s reputation, public relations, or even legal liability?

Performance Goals Should Vary by Earthquake Size

Small, frequent tremors can impact your building differently than rare, catastrophic quakes. Your goals should reflect this as well.

Generally speaking, it’s reasonable to accept that a major, very rare earthquake might cause some damage, financial loss, and downtime. Simply designing a building for absolutely no damage in the worst-case event is, most of the time, impractical.

However, for something like a moderate earthquake, which has a higher chance of occurring, you might expect your building to remain functional with only minor repairs needed.

In other words, your performance goals should align with your targets for safety, repair time, and allowable damage to expect earthquake severity. For moderate events, you may set high performance expectations, while for extreme events, the objective may be more forgiving.

One useful tool for this is a performance goal-setting worksheet. This is a simple table where you can define acceptable outcomes for different earthquake scenarios—for example, moderate and rare events. By filling in the target outcomes, you can make decisions on what you’re willing to tolerate.

Example of an Earthquake Performance Goal Worksheet

Performance Category	Moderate Quake (More Likely)	Large Quake (Rare)	Major Quake (Very Rare)
Level of Safety	No injuries	< 1% chance of injuries	Some injuries possible
Max. Acceptable Downtime	1 day	1 month	6 months
Max. Acceptable Repair Cost	1% of building replacement cost	20% of building replacement cost	50% of building replacement cost
Level of Protection for Contents	90% chance critical contents intact	50% chance intact	10% chance intact
Functionality After Quake	Fully operational	Limited services functional	Non-operational until repairs complete
Acceptable Chance of Collapse	< 1%	< 5%	< 10%
Acceptable Chance of Red Tag	< 10%	< 25%	< 50%
Utility Availability	Full availability within 24 hours	Available within 1 week	Gradual restoration over several weeks
Emergency Access for Occupants	Always accessible	Temporary access interruptions	Access restricted
Environmental Hazard Containment	No release of hazardous materials	Minor release, contained immediately	Risk of larger release, response needed
Sheltering Capacity	Can shelter-in-place for 48–72 hours	Partial sheltering possible	Not suitable for sheltering
Recovery Cost Tolerance	Minimal disruption to budget	Requires budget reallocation	May require external funding/insurance

Developing a Performance-based Seismic Design

Once you’ve designed your earthquake performance goals, the next step is to find a qualified professional to turn these goals into a feasible plan. This is known as a performance-based seismic design.

According to FEMA P-58, performance-based seismic design evaluates a building’s expected behavior under different earthquake scenarios, including potential repair costs, downtime, and occupant safety—allowing building owners to tailor designs to their specific risk tolerance and operational priorities.

Unlike a conventional code-based approach, which primarily aims to prevent total collapse, a performance-based approach aims to achieve specific outcomes you want for your building (life safety, financial safety, downtime minimization, etc.).

For example, if your goal is “immediate occupancy” after a moderate earthquake, these engineers will develop a design to limit the internal and external damage of your property to allow for this.

Contact Us Today

Developing and implementing earthquake performance goals should be left to the professionals. If you want to protect your property, staff, residents, and investment today, contact our team at Avant-Garde.

Our team will listen to your goals and help develop a performance-based seismic design to fulfill your needs. Once approved, they can then actualize this design using the best materials and following the best practices. See the difference we can make today.