Incremental Seismic Rehabilitation Of School Buildings K 12 Providing Protection To People And Buildings

This manual is intended to assist school administration personnel responsible for the funding and operation of existing school facilities across the United States. This guide and its companion documents are the products of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) project to develop the concept of incremental seismic rehabilitation—that is, building modifications that reduce seismic risk by improving seismic performance and that are implemented over an extended period, often in conjunction with other repair, maintenance, or capital improvement activities. The manual was developed after analyzing the management practices of school districts of varying sizes located in various seismic zones in different parts of the United States. It focuses on the identified concerns and decisionmaking practices of K-12 public and private school managers and administrators. Earthquakes are a serious threat to school safety and pose a significant potential liability to school officials and to school districts. School buildings in 39 states are vulnerable to earthquake damage. Unsafe existing buildings expose school administrators to the following risks: Death and injury of students, teachers, and staff; Damage to or collapse of buildings; Damage and loss of furnishings, equipment, and building contents; Disruption of educational programs and school operations. The greatest earthquake risk is associated with existing school buildings that were designed and constructed before the use of modern building codes. For many parts of the United States, this includes buildings built as recently as the early 1990s. Although vulnerable school buildings need to be replaced with safe new construction or rehabilitated to correct deficiencies, for many school districts new construction is limited, at times severely, by budgetary constraints, and seismic rehabilitation is expensive and disruptive. However, an innovative approach that phases a series of discrete rehabilitation actions implemented over a period of several years, incremental seismic rehabilitation, is an effective, affordable, and non-disruptive strategy for responsible mitigation action. It can be integrated efficiently into ongoing facility maintenance and capital improvement operations to minimize cost and disruption. The strategy of incremental seismic rehabilitation makes it possible to get started now on improving earthquake safety in your school district. This manual provides school administrators with the information necessary to assess the seismic vulnerability of their buildings, and to implement a program of incremental seismic rehabilitation for those buildings.

FEMA-P-459. Risk Management Series. This manual provides building owners and their design consultants with guidance on developing a program of incremental security enhancements that can be implemented over a period of time.

This manual is intended to provide guidance for the protection of school buildings and their occupants from natural disasters, and the economic losses and social disruption caused by building damage and destruction. This volume concentrates on grade schools, K-12. This publication covers earthquakes, floods, and high winds. Its intended audience is design professionals and school officials involved in the technical and financial decisions of school construction, repair, and renovations. This publication stresses that identification of hazards and their frequency and careful consideration of design against hazards must be integrated with all other design issues, and be present from the inception of the site selection and building design process. Chapters 1-3 present issues and background information that are common to all hazards. Chapters 4-6 cover the development of specific risk management measures for each of the three main natural hazards. Chapter 1 opens with a brief outline of the past, present, and future of school design. Chapter 2 introduces the concepts of performance-based design in order to obtain required performance from a new or retrofitted facility. Chapter 3 introduces the concept of multihazard design and presents a general description and comparison of the hazards, including charts that show where design against each hazard interacts with design for other hazards. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 outline the steps necessary in the creation of design to address risk management concerns for protection against earthquakes, floods, and high winds, respectively. A guide to the determination of acceptable risk and realistic performance objectives is followed by a discussion to establish the effectiveness of current codes to achieve acceptable performance. A list of acronyms used in the manual are appended. (Contains 13 tables and 124 figures.).