CAREER: An Integrated Experimental and Numerical Vulnerability Assessment of Aging Housing Infrastructure and Communities

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This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will advance understanding of the interplay between chronic and acute natural hazard effects on wood residential buildings and will enable the development and evaluation of mitigation strategies that will improve housing functional recovery. The project outcomes will be applicable to wood housing infrastructure for post-disaster rehabilitation or pre-disaster preparedness solutions by local communities and governments considering various socioeconomic indicators. Additionally, the outcomes will inform building codes on the response and capacity of aging infrastructure and for the adoption of environmental degradation in the design of new homes. The education and outreach plans will contribute to developing and preparing a future diverse STEM workforce with interdisciplinary training to tackle the housing challenges of the 21st century. This research will contribute to the National Science Foundation (NSF) role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP). The overarching goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive framework for understanding, assessing, and enhancing the performance of aging wood residential infrastructure subjected to combined chronic and acute (seismic) natural hazards and its impact on housing communities. The research objectives of this project are to (a) quantify the dominant environmentally induced deterioration mechanisms of aging wood members and (b) link the structural performance of wood members and buildings under combined chronic and acute hazards to post-disaster functional recovery time, health, and social disruption of housing communities. To achieve these objectives, the research plan will comprise two thrust areas, namely, building-level and community-level vulnerability assessment of aging wood infrastructure with tasks on: (a) experimental investigations of wood members aged due to biotic decay and mechanical deterioration; (b) development of Bayesian-based predictive models for major mechanical properties of wood members considering individual and combined aging mechanisms, and accounting for uncertainties; (c) structural performance assessment of wood buildings under combined chronic and acute hazards; (d) risk analysis of aging housing infrastructure and communities through holistic agent-based models of housing communities accounting for social vulnerability indicators; and (e) mitigation strategies for improved functional recovery of housing communities through integrated optimization analyses and expert feedback solicitation. Data generated from this project will be archived and made publicly available in the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Data Depot (https:/www.DesignSafe-ci.org).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.