Design of the seismic retrofit of a school in accordance to a life cycle thinking approach

The public consciousness of the seismic risk is continuously increasing, although the damage on existing and older buildings due to earthquakes is still high, due to a former structural design not accounting for the latest knowledge achieved in the seismic field. This is particularly true considering the damage recorded in the last earthquakes that hit Central Italy in August and October 2016. The paper deals with the repair actions required in the elementary school of Pievebovigliana (Macerata-Italy) after the aforementioned seismic events. The school is a one-story building characterized by an irregular plan layout; masonry walls with regular blocks are the main supporting structure. An attempt is made to adopt a Life Cycle Thinking approach in the design of the intervention. The energy efficiency and environmental impacts related to different types of retrofit intervention are assessed. The retrofit interventions are conceived as carried out from the outside and using prefabricated solutions to minimize the building downtime and to facilitate the construction sequence. The structural retrofit is designed to reduce the damage to the existing masonry walls in the case of seismic events.