Optimal seismic design considering risk attitude, societal tolerable risk level, and life quality criterion

The minimum expected life-cycle cost decision rule leads to an optimal design for a risk-neutral decision maker, but fails to incorporate the magnitude of uncertainty in the life-cycle cost and is incapable of coping with risk attitudes. The maximum expected utility decision rule results in a utility function dependent optimal decision that may not be accepted by a decision maker with a different utility function. This study develops a framework for selecting efficient or optimal seismic designs by considering the decision maker's risk attitude, societal tolerable risk level, and societal life quality criterion. Analysis results suggest that use of the developed framework can identify different sets of optimal designs for different risk attitudes. The results also show that the societal life quality criterion, for the considered examples, could only lead to a lower bound on the seismic design level for risk-seeking decision makers, whereas a reasonable tolerable risk level could provide a lower bound on the seismic design level for risk-seeking or risk-averse decision makers, or deny any acceptable designs for risk-neutral and risk-seeking decision makers.