Demolition-and-Reconstruction or Renovation? Towards a Protocol for the Assessment of the Residual Life of Existing RC Buildings

When is demolition mandatory? To date there is a lack of specific tools and protocols enabling a rigorous scientific assessment of the deterioration level of existing structures, guiding the choice between the real possibility of renovation or the unavoidable need of demolition. In the present paper, an attempt is made to develop a protocol suitable to assess the actual capacity of existing structures and predict their future behaviour based on inspection and diagnosis of the building. The potential benefit of such a tool is to help detecting the best intervention strategy making the renovation process more sustainable and efficient. Toward this perspective, a critical analysis and comparison of literature models on the residual capacity of structural elements has already been carried out by the authors. The assessment of the preservation state is herein further extended to the overall structural level, by proposing a new approach relating the performance of deteriorated elements over time to the behaviour of the whole structural system.