Quantifying the effect of improved school and residential building codes for tornadoes in community resilience

Tornadoes can destroy or severely damage physical infrastructure including buildings in a community. This can result in direct losses but also indirect losses such as the closure of key social institutions reverberating further through the community (e.g., schools). Despite significant losses in past events, building codes and standards have not previously included tornado hazards because of the relatively low probability of a direct strike. The recent release of the ASCE 7–22 standard considers tornadoes for Risk Category 3 and 4 buildings, i.e. ranging from schools to critical facilities. This study proposes a series of design combinations of a reinforced masonry school building with different performance targets intended to enable schools to reopen sooner. Tornado fragilities were developed for a school building having improved designs using tornado loads determined based on the new tornado chapter in ASCE 7–22, and then integrated into a community level model with school attendance zones to examine the effect. The ultimate goal in this study is to investigate the effect of improving school building designs would have on maintaining school continuity (and more rapid return) for school children.