Engineering Failure Analysis 100 (2019) 439–455

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Engineering Failure Analysis

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engfailanal

A new index to evaluate exposure and potential damage to RC

T
building structures incoastal areas
⁎
Valentino Sangiorgioa, Giuseppina Uvaa, Fabio Fatigusoa, Jose M. Adamb,
a
DICATECH, Politecnico di Bari, Via Edoardo Orabona 4, Bari, Italy
b
ICITECH, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: Exposure to an aggressive marine atmosphere can seriously harm reinforced concrete (RC)
Damage assessment structures and affects a building's service life. In particular, buildings close to the sea are at high
Environmental interaction risk of suffering damage, mainly due to the effects of chloride. The scientific and technical
Failure analysis communities are interested in studying new parameters related to building degradation, in-
Forensic engineering
cluding “exposure to aggressive environments” in order to predict a building's service life and
Chloride
schedule maintenance and monitoring systems. This paper proposes a marine exposure index
aimed at quantifying potential risks and damage to RC building structures. The definition of the
index includes three synergistically related techniques: i) the Analytic Hierarchy Processes to
analyze the complexity of the problem and the parameters involved in marine exposure; ii) a
state-of-the-art technique to evaluate the degree of building degradation; iii) an optimization
calibration procedure by setting a Mathematical Programming problem. The resulting index can
be extensively and fruitfully applied by researchers and practitioners in order to assess the
building's exposure to an aggressive marine atmosphere. Architects and engineers could apply the
proposed index in any phase of the building process, from the project to the maintenance and
management phases. The effectiveness of the proposal was tested in a survey of 1816 buildings on
the Valencia coast (Spain).

1. Introduction

The marine atmosphere is one of the most aggressive environments for reinforced concrete (RC) structures and has a considerable
effect on their service life. Serious damage and premature aging are often found in building structures near the sea. This can be
particularly severe if they have been given no special protection or if no attention was paid to this aspect during their construction. As
codes for designing RC structures against marine environments have only been introduced in the last 50 years, most existing buildings
are not designed to withstand their harmful effects [1,2].
The parameters involved in the aging phenomena can be found in the related literature and used to evaluate service life prediction
[3,4] by considering internal and external parameters involved in these phenomena. In the well-known Factorial Method, first pro-
moted by the Architectural Institute of Japan [5], the internal parameters are associated with the following factors regarding building
characteristics: i) design level of the structure, ii) type and usage of the building, iii) indoor environment, in particular considering
humidity and the probability of surface condensation, iv) quality of the building components and v) work execution level. The
external parameters, which do not depend directly on the typological and functional characteristics of the building are: i) the level of

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: joadmar@upv.es (J.M. Adam).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2019.02.052
Received 1 June 2018; Received in revised form 18 February 2019; Accepted 26 February 2019
Available online 28 February 2019
1350-6307/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
V. Sangiorgio, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 100 (2019) 439–455

maintenance, ii) the outdoor environment, composed of multiple phenomena like humidity, dry/damp cycles and shelter from the
rain. In relation to outdoor considerations, many studies include other phenomena related to the marine atmosphere that can greatly
influence the external aggressive factors [6].
Although the principal damage to RC structures in marine atmospheres is due to the corrosion of the reinforcement by chlorides
[7], some authors, such as Pradhan et al. [8] and Jinet al. [9], enlightened that chloride-sulphate and magnesium-sulphate-chloride
can also cause serious damage to these structures.
Moreover, the harmful nature of marine atmospheres is related to other factors that can worsen the exposure to chemical agents
by increasing the building's exposure to marine aerosol, according to the degree of exposure of the structure to the weather (e.g.
prevailing winds), the location of the structure (possible shielding) and the moisture present in the concrete pores [9–12]. In this
context, Adam et al. [13], Moreno et al. [14] and Medeiros et al. [15] study the effects and the parameters involved in the marine
atmosphere by analyzing the deterioration of buildings near the coast using the following parameters: i) climatology, i.e., tem-
perature, humidity and prevailing winds; ii) planning, including distance from the sea, urban morphology and urban growth type;
and iii) structures, considering concrete characteristics and construction system. In order to identify the parameters that influence
deterioration, building degradation analysis techniques play a fundamental role in determining the condition of the building stock. In
the related literature, different approaches use code and protocol guidelines to extensively assess the existing buildings' critical
conditions [16,17] in order to schedule maintenance, repairs and ensure user safety [18]. These approaches are based on a semeiotic
assessment, i.e. the analysis of the manifestations of damages to provide diagnostics. In addition, to perform the analysis, a detailed
survey [19,20], a centralized pathology database and a scoring system based on a set of Key Performance Indixes (KPIs) are required
[21,22]. These KPIs can be obtained by exploiting Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques such as Analytic Hierarchy
Processes (AHP) [23–25] to quantify the risk connected with each critical effect and its impact on the building's overall safety
[26,27].
This paper proposes an index devoted to quantifying the exposure of RC building structures to a marine environment calibrated by
state-of-the-art techniques. This ambitious objective is achieved by employing three synergistically related techniques: i) AHP to
analyze and structure the problem and define the index; ii) a building degradation analysis considering a large number of buildings;
iii) an optimization procedure to calibrate the index.
The work was carried out in three phases:

1) The criteria, sub criteria and variables involved in the marine environment were taken into account by exploiting the widespread
studies of the phenomena in the related literature. The Analytic Hierarchy Processes (AHP) was used to analyze the complex
problem and define the index, following Saaty's well-known 3-step method [28]: i) hierarchical structuring of the problem trans-
formed a multidimensional scaling problem into multiple one-dimensional scaling problems, ii) weight evaluation by pairwise
comparisons to set and solve an eigenvector problem, iii) a summary of priority to obtain the exposure index formula, following the
steps of the AHP.
2) In the second phase two different approaches were used to evaluate the degree of building degradation. The first approach was the
Alert-D method [22], used to obtain a numerical quantification of the building's degradation by a detailed survey of 131 building
in three towns with different types of urban planning. This procedure analysed in detail the damage of each component and class
of components in a building by a set of suitable KPIs calculated on the basis of tabulated weights. A global index, known as the
Building Condition rating (BCr), was used to quantify the overall state of the building. This phase exploited a previous study by
Adam et al. [13] on towns near the Valencia coast in which a total of 1816 buildings in 14 towns were inspected and damage was
quantified by a Global Damage Index (GDI) suitable for use in a rapid survey on an urban scale.
3) The third phase calibrated the index by evaluating the degradation level of a large number of buildings obtained by the two
different approaches in order to assess critical damage by solving an optimization problem to minimize the differences between
the results of the Index of marine exposure (Ime) and the effective numerical quantification obtained by the building degradation
analysis. The mathematical optimization problem exploited the results of the AHP and the building degradation analyses to obtain
a calibrated index. A sensitivity analysis was also carried out to obtain robust results by considering the possible variations in the
final results if the surveyed buildings had been in different sets.

The main novelty of the paper is threefold. For the first time different techniques are simultaneously employed in a structured and
synergic way for analyzing the marine exposure of RC building structures. The resulting methodology required a variety of inter-
disciplinary skills, including structural engineering, forensic engineering, statistics, optimization and multi-criteria analysis. The
second novel issue is the proposal of a quantitative index to overcome the limitations of the qualitative analyses described in the
literature. Thirdly, the research reached the ambitious result of calibrating the index by surveying close to two thousand buildings.
The obtained marine exposure index can be a useful tool for both building project and maintenance phases and can be used to
evaluate the outdoor environment parameter and predict service life. Moreover, the proposed index could give valuable assistance in
identifying design improvements aimed at preventing RC corrosion. The index could also be used by researchers, architects, engineers
and interested stakeholders to include environmental parameters in building degradation analyses and improve management and
maintenance tools to prioritize interventions and identify an effective maintenance strategy.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 specifies the methodological phases in applying AHP to define the marine en-
vironment exposure index. Section 3 describes the degradation analysis of 1816 surveyed buildings near the Valencia coast by two
different methods. Section 4 describes the calibration of the index by solving an optimization problem and a sensitivity analysis. The
main conclusions drawn from this research project are given in Section 5.

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Table 1
Saaty's fundamental scale.
aij Verbal scale

aij = 1 Equal importance

aij = 3 Moderate importance of one over another
aij = 5 Strong importance
aij = 7 Very strong importance
aij = 9 Extreme importance
1.5–4 - 6 - 8 Intermediate value
1/9,1/8,….,1/2 The reciprocal expresses an opposite judgment

2. Evaluation of exposure to a marine environment

The AHP methodology is used to define the marine environment exposure index. By exploiting the existing information in the
literature on the subject, it is possible to define criteria and sub-criteria and compile the index following Saaty's well known 3-step
Method [23]: i) hierarchical structuring of the problem, ii) weight evaluation, iii) summary of priority.

2.1. AHP based methodology

Starting from a decision problem, the first step consists of structuring the problem according to a hierarchical scheme, to provide a
detailed, simple and systematic decomposition of the problem into its basic components. To this aim, the goal of the AHP is identified
and the related criteria, sub-criteria and alternatives to reach the goal are determined.
The second step of weight evaluation is the core of the method and provides the weights that are necessary to generate the ranking.
It is possible to separately analyze each aspect of the decision problem. Considering n ordered criteria of comparison (i.e., criteria,
sub-criteria or alternatives in relation to criteria or sub-criteria), a n × n judgments matrix A is defined, where each upper diagonal
element aij > 0 is generated by comparing the i-th with the j-th element through the fundamental scale of absolute numbers (Table 1).
This semantic scale is composed of verbal scales that are associated with numerical values (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) and compromises (1.5, 2, 4, 6,
8) between them.
The AHP uses the principal eigenvalue method for deriving ratio scale priority vectors from positive reciprocal matrices. The
weights are obtained by solving the following eigenvector problem:
A w = λmax w (1)
where w is the eigenvector and λmax is the principal eigenvalue. In addition, Saaty defines the consistency index CI to check the
coherence of the assigned judgment. The index increases proportionally with the incoherence of the matrix:
λmax − n
CI =
n−1 (2)
Operationally, the consistency test is performed through the Consistency Ratio (CR) to verify that the paired comparisons are
coherent, and the result is reliable. More precisely, CR is obtained by considering the ratio between CI and its expected value, denoted
the Random Index (RI), determined on a large number of positive reciprocal matrices of order n whose entries are randomly chosen in
the set of values n∈{1,2, …, 20}. The following relationship holds:
CI
CR =
RI (n) (3)
Among the different values of RI proposed in the literature, those in Noble [29] were used, as reported in Table 2. On the basis of
several empirical studies, Saaty concluded that the value of Consistency Ratio CR < 0.10 is acceptable [23].
The third step, i.e., the summary of priority, is performed to determine the global ranking and the global weights; for this the
weights of each criterion are combined with the weights of the alternatives. The global weight is obtained by multiplying each criteria
weight by the alternative weight and totalling the results for each alternative [22,30].

2.2. AHP first step: definition of criteria, subcriteria and intensity ranges

The first step in AHP, as applied to the evaluation of exposure to the marine environment, consists of the Structure of the Problem.
The goal is to determine an index useful to quantify the aggressive marine environment exposure of a building. To this aim, five criteria i

Table 2
Noble's random consistency index [27].
n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

R.I. 0 0 0.49 0.82 1.03 1.16 1.25 1.31 1.36 1.39

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Fig. 1. Structure of the Problem: weight criteria and alternatives to determine an index able to quantify the exposure of the aggressive marine
environment.

(with i = 1, …,5) that affect the building corrosion analysed in the study by Moreno et al. [31] are structured in a hierarchical
flowchart (Fig. 1). For each criterion a set of three intensity ranges j (with j = 1, …,3) is defined to characterize the exposure intensity
levels of the criterion. The five criteria, sub-criteria and intensity ranges involved in the aggressive marine environment evaluation are
shown in Fig. 1 and discussed for each building as follows:

1) Distance from the water line is a determining factor in the quantity of salt particles in the air. Salinity depends on the distance from
the water line and rapidly reduces with distance from this mark. Some authors [11,32] found that the highest concentration of
airborne chloride ions is in the first 100 m. Three different intensity ranges were selected in Moreno et al. [31] and included in this
problem structure: i) distance from the shore of between 0 and 50 m; ii) between 50 and 100 m and iii) distances > 100 m.
2) Prevailing wind speed also has an important influence on the salt content of the atmosphere [33,34]. Morcillo et al. [35] determined
atmospheric salinity by analyzing the winds recorded by the weather stations on the coast of Tarragona (Spain) and found that
certain directions of the prevailing wind from the sea contribute most to the inland penetration of salt particles. The average speed
of a sea wind becomes critical when over 10.80 km/h due to the formation of a significant salt spray. Consequently, the three
intensity ranges were defined as: under 9 km/h, between 9 and 10.80 km/h and over 10.80 km/h
3) Position in relation to the water line is important to consider the shielding effect of other buildings. In residential areas with several
rows of houses, the degree of exposure is greatest on the row nearest to the beach. This difference is due to the windbreak effect of
the buildings [31]. For this reason, a building can be classified in accordance with its position in the urban context into three
intensity ranges: i) those on the sea front; ii) those on the second line; iii) and those further back.
4) A town's type of urban growth is also significant when analyzing the influence of the marine atmosphere on its buildings. When they
have shared walls, a closed unit is created with a long front and a compact volume. In other types of urban growth, the building
blocks may be exposed on all sides, allowing the salt spray to circulate freely with nothing to act as a barrier. In this criterion, the
three intensity ranges were classified according to the number of walls shared with other buildings, as follows: i) isolated buildings,
ii) one shared wall, and iii) two shared walls.

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5) Climatic events are connected with the moisture content in the pores, which plays a determining role in concrete resistivity [36].
This phenomenon was studied in detail by Medeiros et al. [15], who analysed the behaviour of a structure exposed to a marine
atmosphere and climatic events for 40 years. On the basis of this knowledge, the Climatic events criterion was divided into three
sub-criteria k (with k = 1, …,3) and their intensity ranges j were defined following the results of Moreno et al. [31] and Andrade and
Castillo [36]. The Climatic events sub-criteria are the following:
•Relative humidity was widely studied in combination with the marine atmosphere as a cause of RC corrosion in Zaccardi et al.
[37]. The relative intensity ranges in these studies are: under 70%, between 70%–80% and over 80%.
•Average annual air temperature was studied in depth together with humidity in corrosion processes by Bouteiller et al. [38]. The
study found that higher temperatures are less aggressive than lower ones thanks to the reduced moisture content of the con-
crete. The intensity ranges of average annual temperatures were defined as: under 10 °C, between 10 °C–15 °C and over 15 °C.
•Rainfall is a decisive parameter for wetting-drying cycles [39] and influences the chloride ion concentrations in the air. Morcillo
et al. [35] found high levels of salt in the air after storms, which often form salt deposits on concrete surfaces. The consequent
intensity ranges of rainfall days were defined as: over 100 gg, between 80 gg–100gg and under 80 gg.

2.3. AHP second step: evaluating weights

The second step in the AHP individually analyses each aspect of the Structure of the Problem in order to weight the parameters
involved. The criteria, sub-criteria and intensity ranges weights are defined as follows:

• v is the weight associated with each i criterion i ∈ C

i
-th

• v is the weight associated with the sub-criterion k with i = 5

5k
-th

• w is the weight associated with each j intensity range related to the i criterion
ij
-th -th

• w is the weight associated with each j intensity range related to the k sub-criterion with i = 5.
5kj
-th -th

This Section exploits previous studies of the phenomena involved in aggressive marine environments to obtain eight judgment
matrices A: seven were used to identify the weights of intensity ranges wij and w5kj and one to identify the weight of sub-criteria v5k. The
weight calculations of the intensity ranges related to distance from the coast and to the urban growth type criteria are shown. Distance
from the coast was analysed by considering the studies of different authors [11], who found that the concentration of chloride ions in
the atmosphere decreases rapidly with distance from the coast, especially in the first 100 m [32]. Following Gustafsson et al. [11] and
Meira et al. [32], pairwise comparisons of the alternatives were carried out performing a qualitative analysis to achieve the judgment
matrix A2. The weights were obtained by solving the eigenvector problem, as shown in Eq. (1) for matrix A2.
The resulting matrix satisfied the Consistency Ratio requirement CR < 0.1 and derived consistent weights w2j, normalized be-
tween 0 and 1 (see Table 3).
A quantitative evaluation was performed for the urban growth type criterion to obtain the values of matrix A4. This criterion
considered shared walls with other buildings, so that exposure fell with the number of shared walls. For example, the value a1,2 was
obtained by comparing an isolated building with 4 free sides exposed to the marine environment with a building with 1 shared wall
and 3 exposed sides. The value a1,2 was equal to 4/3 = 1.3 (rounded off to one decimal place), as shown in matrix A4 in Table 4, until
A4 was obtained.
The weights of matrix A4 were derived by solving the eigenvector problem by Eq. (1). The resulting matrix satisfied the Con-
sistency Ratio requirement CR < 0.1 and derived consistent weights w4j (normalized between 0 and 1), as shown in Table 4. After
obtaining the weights of the intensity ranges related to each criterion, the second AHP step obtained the tabulated weights related to
the Structure of the Problem (Table 5). Since no previous studies have been published on the criteria considered for the degree of
aggressiveness of the marine environment, it was not possible to reliably evaluate their weights vi. To solve this problem, the weights
were calibrated by a degradation analysis and an optimization procedure.

2.4. AHP third step: definition of marine exposure index

After weighting, the marine exposure index (Ime) can be defined. This operation coincides with the third step of the summary of
priority. The formula is obtained by multiplying each criteria weight by the intensity range weight and adding the results, as in the
classical AHP procedure [22,40]:
Ime = v1 ∗ w1j + v2 ∗ w2j + v3 ∗ w3j + v4 ∗ w4j + v5 (v5,1 ∗ w5,1j + v5,2 ∗ w5,2j + v5,3 ∗ w5,3j ) (4)

Table 3
Judgment Matrix A2, weights, and CR obtained for the intensity ranges related to “distance from the coast” criterion.
A2 a b c CR w2j

Between 0 and 50 m (a) 1.0 1.5 4.0 0.0016 1.00

Between 50 and 100 m (b) 0.7 1.0 3.0 0.69
Above 100 m (c) 0.3 0.3 1.0 0.24

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Table 4
Judgment Matrix A4, weights, and CR obtained for the urban growth type criterion.
A4 i.b. 1 s.w. 2+ s.w. CR w4j

Isolated building (i.b.) 1.0 1.3 2.0 0.00 1.00

1 shared wall (1 s.w.) 0.8 1.0 1.5 0.75
2 or more shared wall (2+ s.w.) 0.5 0.7 1.0 0.50

The wij and w5kj weights are obtained in the second AHP step, as can be seen in Table 5. In addition, vi is the weight associated
with each i-th criterion and represents the variables of Eq. (4) in the subsequent optimization problem.

3. Building degradation analysis

The Alert-D methodology in Sangiorgio et al. [41] aims to quantify damage in order to evaluate the state of conservation of
existing RC building structures using damage data from on-site surveys. A set of suitable Key Performance Indices (KPIs) is used,
calculated on the basis of tabulated weights [42].
This section describes how the Alert-D method is used to quantify the degree of building degradation by means of a detailed
survey carried out in the coastal region of Valencia. Additional material from previous studies [13] in the same area was compared
with the Alert-D analysis results and used to perform an additional calibration of Ime.

3.1. Method of quantifying building degradation

The formulation and the steps necessary for the quantification of building degradation (Alert-D) are described. A scheme of the
evaluation phases can be seen in Fig. 2.
The first step is the structural decomposition of F classes of components (shear wall, column, beam, etc.). Let us consider E
possible components and each f-th class can include a subset of components. In the second step, a report is generated based on the on-
site surveys for each building pathology: every report is composed of a photographic survey and other structural information or-
ganized into four alternatives (one for each criterion). Alternatives and criteria are shown in Fig. 3.
Four tabulated weights are assigned to each alternative for each reported pathology [42]. Note that each weight is associated with
only one criterion or alternative, so that the weights can be automatically assigned when the set of alternatives is known.
Let us consider a generic component e and its detected damage Δ. The index associated to the single damage SDd with d = 1, …, Δ
and ranging from 0 to 1 is obtained by the following Eq. [22]:
m
SDd = ∑ ai × bij with j ∈ {1,…, ali }
i=1 (5)

where for each i only one j is associated.

Once the single damage SDd, has been obtained, the critical condition rating (Cre) concise index, which quantifies the deterioration of
a component is defined as a function of the values of SDd as follows:
Δ
⎛ ∑ SDd − SDmax ⎞
Cre = SDmax 1 + d = 1 Δ
⎜ 2 ∗ ∑d = 1 SDd ⎟⎠
⎝ (6)

where SDmax is the maximum value obtained for SDd, with d = 1,…, Δ.
The concise index that quantifies the deterioration of the f-th class of components, known as the component condition rating of class
f (CCrf), is calculated by adding the values of Cre representing the critical condition rating of component n belonging to the same f-th
class (obtained by Eq. (6)). The value of CCrf is computed as follows:

∑e Cre
CCrf =
γk ∗ Stot (7)

where Stot is the total building area and γk is the approximate evaluation of the number of components considered per square meter.
Note that the sum in Eq. (7) includes the subset of components e related to class f. Finally, the degree of deterioration of the whole
structure (BCr) is calculated by adding the values of Cre associated with all the elements belonging to the same building through the
following expression:
E
∑e = 1 Cre
BCr =
γb ∗ Stot (8)

where Stot is the total building area and γb is the approximate evaluation of the number of components per square meter, evaluated for
the specific RC building typology.

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Table 5
Tabulated weight obtained by applying AHP Step 2.
Criteria/subcriteria Criteria/subcriteria Weight Range 1 Range 1 weight Range 2 Range 2 weight Range 3 Range 3 weight

Prevailing wind v1 above 10.8 km/h w1,1 = 1.00 10.8–9 km/h w1,2 = 0.69 under 9 km/h w1,3 = 0.33
Distance from the coast v2 0-50 m w2,1 = 1.00 50–100 m w2,2 = 0.69 above 100 m w2,3 = 0.33
Position in relation to the water line v3 front line w3,1 = 1.00 second line w3,2 = 0.33 third or more w3,3 = 0.11

445
Urban growth types (shared walls) v4 isolated w4,1 = 1.00 1 shared wall w4,2 = 0.75 2+ shared walls w4,3 = 0.50
Climatic events v5
Climatic events (Temperature) v5,1 = 0.33 under 10° C w5,1,1 = 1.00 10 °C–15 °C w5,1,2 = 0.69 above 15 °C w5,1,3 = 0.33
Climatic events (Rainfall) v5,2 = 0.33 above 100gg w5,2,1 = 1.00 80-100gg w5,2,2 = 0.69 under 80 gg w5,2,3 = 0.33
Climatic events (UR) v5,2 = 0.33 above 80% w5,3,1 = 1.00 70–80% w5,3,2 = 0.69 under 70% w5,3,3 = 0.33
Engineering Failure Analysis 100 (2019) 439–455
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Fig. 2. Flow chart of the Alert-D building damage evaluation method.

3.2. Survey of buildings on the Valencia coast

The Alert-D methodology was applied to131 buildings in Valencia's coastal region (Spain) (Fig. 4). This coastline is 440 km long
and contains 65 townships, with the notable presence of multi-storey holiday-apartment blocks, which outnumber those used as
permanent residences. The most common typology and construction type is classified as multi-family, multi-storey buildings with RC
slabs and frames, which began to be massively constructed in the 1960s and continued being built up to the start of the economic and
real estate crisis of 2007. Some of the buildings in this area are highly exposed to the aggressive marine environment as they are quite
close to the sea.
The Alert-D methodology was applied to multi-storey buildings with RC slabs and frames in three different towns. The reason for
this choice was their different types of urban plans, which can be described as follows:

• 53 buildings were analysed in El Perellonet (Fig. 5), a town with a linear development along the beach-front. This type of de-
velopment is characterised by parallel rectangular plots close to the coastline. Within these plots the buildings do not follow any
defined pattern. The blocks have > 10 storeys with large shared areas.
• 62 buildings were analysed in Puebla de Farnals (Fig. 6), which has a rectangular residential area with several rows of houses and a
small port. The buildings on the beach front are small villas that shield the multi-storey buildings in the second and third line.
• 16 buildings were analysed in El Puig (Fig. 7). This town is characterised by irregular development, with multi-storey buildings
along the beach front shielding larger buildings further back. The buildings in this town are generally further from the sea than in
other towns on the Valencia coast.

3.3. Analysis of building degradation on the Valencia coast

For each surveyed building and for every building component e the damages surveyed were evaluated by Eq. (5), while Cr was
obtained by Eq. (6). Fig. 8 shows the evaluation of the Cr for a balcony in building 52 affected by heavy concrete spalling and

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Fig. 3. Structure of the Problem: weight criteria and alternatives for a semeiotic assessment of RC building degradation.

Fig. 4. Location of Valencia in Spain and Europe.

consequent loss of blocks.

After evaluating all the Cr for all the components E of every structure, the global condition of the buildings BCr was obtained by
Eq. (9). The damage matrix shows the classification of damage in building 51 and shows that BCr = 0.83 (Fig. 9). The matrix is a useful
graphical interface for an immediate overview of the types of damage affecting the building. In the cell of the matrix (Fig. 9) the
number of the damage items detected with respect to the component and the critical type are indicated. It is worth noting that the CCr
of the Balconies or projections component is equal to 0.9; this indicator suggests that the whole class of components has medium or
serious damage (Fig. 9).
The analysis of all the buildings was represented on a damage map, in which 5 ranges of Cr are identified on a chromatic scale. For
the sake of brevity, Fig. 10 shows only the map of damage in the Playa Puebla de Farnals, in which Building 62, at the top right of the
image, is the most seriously damaged and is the only multi-storey building on the beach front.
Fig. 11 shows the percentage of damaged buildings in the three towns according to the five defined ranges. El Perellonet, in which

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Fig. 5. Technical map of El Perellonet.

most of the buildings are on the beach front, had the highest number of seriously damaged buildings.

3.4. Previous studies on building degradation on the Valencia coast on an urban scale

A further building degradation analysis was carried out using a previous study in the same area [13] to perform an additional
calibration of Ime. The findings of the cited study were based on inspections of a total of 1816 buildings in 14 typical towns in the area.
The final goal of this approach was the classification of the degradation level of the towns as a whole by a rapid survey procedure.
Building damage was classified into four severity levels: 1) negligible, 2) low, 3) moderate and 4) high. In addition, a Global Damage
Index (GDI) ranging from 0 to 100 quantified the damage on an urban scale. The percentage of affected buildings was in some cases
over 40% of the total. The damage was generally found to take the form of cracks due to corrosion of the reinforcement together with
spalling of the concrete cover. The work revealed that a high proportion of the inspected buildings (635 out of a total of 1816) had
structural damage.
It is worth noting that the GDI methodology is suitable for classifying towns, while the Alert-D methodology is focused on a
detailed analysis of single buildings. In the following sections the results of the two methods are used to calibrate Ime and to compare

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Fig. 6. Technical map of Puebla de Farnals.

Fig. 7. Technical map of El Puig.

the differences between the two calibration outcomes.

4. Calibration of the index of marine exposure

This section describes the calibration of the marine exposure index using two building degradation analyses carried out in the
Valencia coastal region. The criteria weights were calibrated by an optimization procedure and a sensitivity analysis using BCrs
obtained by the Alert-D methodology and GDIs from a previous study by Adam et al. [13].

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Fig. 8. Damage on the single component of building 52 in El Perellonet.

Fig. 9. Damage overview and condition ratings of building 51 in El Perellonet.

4.1. Calibration by an optimization procedure and sensitivity analysis using BCr

In order to obtain the weights vi and calibrate the index of marine exposure defined in Eq. (4), we considered K = 131 surveyed
buildings in El Perellonet, Puebla de Farnals and El Puig. The index of marine exposure ImeBu associated with building Bu = 1, …,K is
written in function of the column vector of weights v = [v1, v2, v3, v4, v5]T as follows:
Ime Bu (v ) = v1 ∗ w1j + v2 ∗ w2j + v3 ∗ w3j + v4 ∗ w4j + v5 (v5,1 ∗ w5,1j + v5,2 ∗ w5,2j + v5,3 ∗ w5,3j ) (9)

We now define function F(v), which evaluates the difference between the values of ImeBu and BCrBu calculated for each surveyed
building Bu = 1, …,K:
K
F (v ) = ∑Bu=1 ∣Ime Bu (v ) − BCrme Bu∣ (10)

It is widely accepted in the related literature that damage of buildings close to the coast is principally due to the aggressive marine
environment and that the most exposed buildings are typically the most seriously damaged. To calibrate vector v, we therefore
assumed that the index of marine exposure ImeBu should be as close as possible to the index of effective damage BCrBu for the studied
buildings.
F(v) represents the sum of the differences between the index of marine exposure and the effective degradation of the buildings.
Consequently, we set F(v) as the objective function to be minimized by satisfying a set of constraints on vector v:
Γ(v ):

5
∑i =1 vi = 1 (11a)

vi ≤ 0.6 for i = 1, …, 5 (11b)

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Fig. 10. Damage map of Playa Puebla de Farnals.

Fig. 11. Damaged building distribution in the 3 towns studied.

vi ≥ 0.05 for i = 1, …, 5 (11c)

Constraint Eq. (11a) is a normalization derived from the formulation of the classical index of the AHP procedure, and constraints
Eq. (11b), (11c) are set to avoid overestimation and null values of the weights, respectively.
Now, in order to calculate vector v, the following Mathematical Programming (MP) problem was formulated:
min F (v ) (12a)

subject to Γ(v ) (12b)

A sensitivity analysis was also performed to obtain a robust result. The evaluation took into account how the final results would
have changed, had a different set of buildings been surveyed. For this, 1000 different optimizations were solved by removing a
number m < 0.3 K of buildings selected at random with uniform probability from the complete set.
As an example, Fig. 12 shows the scheme of the random removal of buildings to obtain a new set to be used in the MP problem
solution. The 1000 optimization problems provide seven different solutions v⁎n with n = 1, …, 7 and ln represents the number of
times the n-th solution was found.
The chosen value of weights v* was obtained by a weighted average as follows:

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Fig. 12. An example of random removal of buildings for 1000 different optimizations.

7
∑n = 1 v∗n ∗ ln
v = 7
∑n = 1 ln (13)

The sensitivity analysis parameters given in Fig. 13 show that the optimization problem found robust solutions, since the max-
imum value of a standard deviation of 0.073 was obtained for the position related to the water line criterion, while the average and
median values of each component of v effectively coincide. The result of the analysis suggests that the most important criteria for
exposure to an aggressive marine environment are: distance from the coast, with a weight of v2 = 0.496 and position related to the water
line, with a weight of v3 = 0.341 (Fig. 13).

4.2. Calibration by an optimization procedure and sensitivity analysis using GDI

A similar calibration procedure was performed by exploiting the GDI (normalized from 0 to 1) from the study on H = 1816
buildings in 14 towns on the Valencia coastline by Adam et al. [13]. For this, we defined function F′(v), which evaluates the sum of
differences between the values of ImeBu and GDIBu calculated for each surveyed building Bu = 1, …, H:
H
F ′ (v ) = ∑Bu=1 ∣Ime Bu (v ) − GDIBu∣ (14)

In this case, for the same reason, we set F′(v) as the objective function to be minimized by satisfying the same set of constraints on
vector v and the following MP problem was formulated to perform the second calibration:
min F ′ (v ) (15a)

subject to Γ(v ) (15b)

A sensitivity analysis was also performed to obtain a robust result. 1000 different optimizations were solved, in each of which we
removed a random number m < 0.3H of buildings selected at random from the complete set.

Fig. 13. Result of the calibration and data produced by the sensitivity analysis.

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Fig. 14. Result of the second calibration and data produced by the sensitivity analysis.

The 1000 optimization problems provided five different solutions v⁎⁎n with n = 1, …, 5 and ln represents the number of times the
n-th solution was the outcome. The chosen value of weights v** was obtained by a weighted average as follows (also shown in Fig. 14):
5
∑n = 1 v∗∗ n ∗ ln
v  = 5
∑n = 1 ln (16)
This second calibration confirms that the most important criteria for exposure to an aggressive marine environment are: distance
from the coast, with a weight of v2 = 0.491, and position related to the water line, with a weight of v3 = 0.231 (weights are shown in
Fig. 14, upper left).
The main difference between the two calibrations was in the robustness obtained, which was slightly worse in the second case, as
shown by the sensitivity analysis parameters (Fig. 14). It is worth noting that the lower robustness obtained in this second calibration
could have been due to the methodology used to obtain the GDI, which was defined for classifying towns, while the Alert-D used in
this paper is more suitable for evaluating single buildings condition by the BCr.

4.3. Example of Ime application

The calibration obtained by the Alert-D methodology was used to evaluate a marine exposure index. Fig. 15 shows the flowchart
used in structuring the criteria, sub-criteria and ranges indicating the weights of the criteria obtained from the BCr of the Alert-D
methodology.
In order to show a simple application, the index of marine exposure Ime was calculated for Building 51 in El Perellonet. The
building's marine exposure data are shown in Fig. 16. Using the tabulated weights computed by the AHP (Table 5) and the weights
v*obtained by the calibrations of the Alert-D methodology, it was possible to obtain the index Ime(v*):
Ime (v ) = 0.24 ∗ 0.061 + 0.24 ∗ 0.496 + 1.0 ∗ 0.341 + 1.0 ∗ 0.05 + 1.0 ∗ 0.052 = 0.58
This value can be analysed together with the effective damage surveyed in the building (BCr = 0.83). It can be deduced that this
building has a medium exposure to the marine environment, although serious damage was also found due to poor maintenance and
poor design.

5. Conclusions

This paper proposes for the first time an index devoted to quantifying the exposure of RC building structures to a marine en-
vironment, calibrated by state-of-the-art techniques. This ambitious research project was carried out in three phases: i) the criteria,
sub-criteria and intensity ranges involved in the marine environment were considered to define the index of marine exposure (Ime) by
means of the Analytic Hierarchy Processes (AHP); ii) a large number of buildings on the Valencia coast were surveyed and analysed
by applying two different approaches to assess critical building factors; iii) an optimization problem was set to calibrate Ime based on
in situ surveys and degradation analyses. A sensitivity analysis consisting of 1000 simulations was carried out to determine how the
final results would have changed if different sets of buildings had been surveyed.
The project involved a combination of interdisciplinary skills, including: structural engineering, forensic engineering, statistics,
optimization and multi-criteria analysis in order to apply three synergistic techniques (AHP, building degradation analysis, and an
optimization procedure).

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Fig. 15. Structure of the Problem and calibrated weights vi.

Fig. 16. Environmental data of Building 51 in El Perellonet.

The resulting Ime index is a powerful tool and easy to be applied by practitioners, since the marine exposure data required to
perform the calculation are common and easy to acquire. In particular, the index is able to outcome an exposure value ranging from 0
to 1 by using seven input data including registry data of the building, such as distance from the coast, and very common climatic data,
such as rainy days per year.
To provide some examples of application, the proposed index could be a useful tool to measure a building's exposure to an
aggressive marine environment in any phase of the building process, from the project phase to the building maintenance and
management phases. Moreover, the index could be used to evaluate the outdoor environment in predicting service life and supporting
RC corrosion measures. This concise index can be applied to an urban scale for urban planning and coastal urban developments by
forecasting exposure and potential damage to RC buildings of different possible urbanisations.
Future research will extend the applicability of the proposed Ime to different environmental contexts, construction typologies and

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many types of aggressive environments. In addition, the proposed index will be integrated in decision support systems for large-scale
structures management to consider an automatic evaluation of the aggressive environmental condition.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr. Jose D. Moreno for sharing some of the results obtained from a field survey. Without his help the
paper would not have achieved the required quality and clarity.

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