A multi-criteria decision support framework for designing seismic and thermal resilient facades

Facades play a pivotal role in the performance of a building, serving various environmental, structural and operational functions. As climate-induced extreme events become more frequent, developing resilient facades is becoming crucial. Although facades can contribute significantly to the total post-disruption losses, their resilience is not sufficiently addressed in current design approaches. In response to this research gap, this study proposes a multi-criteria decision-making methodology to select optimal facade designs using resilience criteria: resilience loss and economic loss. The framework addresses the complexity of facade design, considering multiple hazards such as earthquakes and heatwaves. For seismic hazard, the facade’s resilience is defined as its ability to mitigate damage. In the case of heat hazard, resilience is assessed based on the ability to keep indoor conditions within a comfortable thermal range. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology, a case study of an 18-story office building in Izmir (Turkey) is used to compare alternative facade packages. These packages identify the facade design cases, each coupled with a dataset of seismic and thermal fragility curves. Numerical simulations are conducted to derive seismic and thermal resilience curves for each facade package, along with resilience criteria. These criteria are embedded into a practical decision-making process to enable the selection of the optimal design case based on project specifications.