Applicability and effectiveness of different decision making methods for seismic upgrading building structures

Different decision making methods, potentially useful to help who has to decide how seismically upgrade an existing building, are considered herein. They are compared in terms of suitability for the decision task, effectiveness, simplicity of use, degree of human intervention in the corresponding procedures. A case-study consisting of an underdesigned RC structure allows to quantitatively highlight the main aspects related to the use of each decision procedure. Two methods (TOPSIS and VIKOR), among those considered, seem to be more appropriate for solving the retrofit selection problem because of their capability to deal with each kind of judgement criteria, the clarity of their results and the reduced difficulty to deal with parameters and choices they involve.