Risks in high-rise buildings and countermeasures

Abstract

In the last half century, high-rise buildings have entered a phase of rapid development as a result of the swift growth of economy especially in Asia’s developing countries. Despite the optimistic prospect of the development of high-rise buildings, risks exist perpetually. The risks of high-rise buildings consist not only in structures, but also in environmental, social and cultural facets. However, those engaged in the latter one was often ignored, which is not conducive to a thorough assessment. This paper considers and analyses risks in a more integral and comprehensive approach. In this paper risks are divided into three categories: construction, structure and utility based on the building’s entire life cycle. In each category, in order to analyze in more detail, risks are further divided into sub-categories with dropping, mechanical injury, fire and finance in construction, failing and fire in structure and fire, surrounding effects and acceptance in utility. In tune with the risks, countermeasures contain both the concept of solving as well as the exact action to take, including enhance risk prevention measures and ensure risk control measures in construction, adopt the best structural plan, and guarantee structural performance in structure, take effective measures against fire and maintain environmentally and socially friendly in utility. In future study, the risks defined by numerical values and those defined by verbal expressions are expected to get combined through some ingenious way of incorporating. This paper serves as a synthesized analysis of risks in various domains and puts forward corresponding countermeasures.