Integrative building safety evaluation to mitigate disaster risks: a case study on public-use buildings in Seoul

Recognizing potential hazards is imperative for devising pragmatic building inspection and management strategies. However, existing safety evaluation standards across diverse fields have inherent limitations in ensuring overall building safety. Chained and cascading damages following a catastrophic disaster necessitate comprehensive safety management. Thus, this study derived evaluation criteria and determined their priority to assess building safety against various hazardous events in urban settings. This case study targeted Seoul’s public-use buildings with high risks of potential harm to many regular users. Moreover, this study aggregated evaluation categories from existing inspection and certification standards into field-specific groups, including architecture, fire safety, electrical systems, gas systems, vertical transportation, and crime prevention. This categorical evaluation was further analyzed based on their importance for preventing disasters and minimizing damage, emphasizing fire safety as the most essential for securing building safety. In addition, categories evaluated from a preventative perspective hold significantly greater importance than those focused on mitigating damage. This finding underscores the need for proactive monitoring and enhanced building safety across six fields before a disaster strikes. The integrated assessment method facilitates determining which areas are well managed or need improvement. Furthermore, this approach enables efficient building safety enhancement by prioritizing field-specific or evaluation criterion-specific areas.