From Observed Damage to Executable Repair Quantities: The RELA Repair Module

Postearthquake workflows currently support three distinct classes of decisions: safety clearance through rapid tagging, portfolio‐level economic damage estimation through probabilistic loss models, and field inspections based on locally defined survey forms, which may subsequently trigger project‐specific strengthening through retrofit design. However, commitment to executable repair work at the building level, what to repair, where, and in what quantities, remains largely ad hoc, despite being required early in recovery for the majority of lightly to moderately damaged buildings. This paper introduces the RELA Repair Module (RELA‐RM), a rapid, observation‐driven framework that translates visually observed damage into executable repair quantities through predefined decision logic and standardized repair norms. Damage is recorded at the level of individual building elements and transformed into a building‐level Repair Bill of Quantities (RBoQ) expressed in person‐hours and material quantities. Repair cost and duration are subsequently derived through externally supplied pricing and workforce assumptions, while optional qualitative escalation indications flag cases that may require detailed engineering assessment. Spatial localization of repair actions is retained throughout the workflow to preserve building‐level organization of repair scope. Uncertainty is treated as bounded variability arising from three identifiable sources within the workflow: photographic measurement effects, human annotation variability, and dispersion in standardized productivity norms. These contributions are propagated to produce an approximate combined dispersion of ≈26%, interpreted as an engineering bound on expected variability in executable repair quantities. The framework is implemented and demonstrated for masonry walls, while the underlying decision principle is intended to be extensible to other building elements and typologies.