PONE-D-20-15119

Specific seismic retrofitting of a compact reinforced concrete building with X-bracings and steel jackets. Application to a primary school in Huelva.

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In this article, the authors modeled a representative primary school building and suggested seismic retrofitting measures. The topic is current and relevant/important. The article is well organized and written. However, some additional comments are given in order to improve the article.

This statement should be referenced (page 3, lines 58-62):

“It is possible to reduce the seismic risk by improving the prevention studies and emergency plans. In this sense, it is important to analyse the seismic vulnerability of the buildings given that a large part of the losses is due to the deficient seismic behaviour of the building structures. Therefore, the study of seismic retrofitting techniques, which improves the buildings’ seismic behaviour, is mandatory.”

Possible literature where this statement could be find in:

Hadzima-Nyarko, M.; Mišetić, V.; Morić, D. Seismic vulnerability assessment of an old historical masonry building in Osijek, Croatia, using Damage Index. Journal of Cultural Heritage. 28 (2017), 140-150.

This part from the State of the Art is more suitable for Introduction:

“For example, several seismic vulnerability and risk research works have been performed on an urban scale in big cities such as Barcelona [10][11] or Lisbon [12]. The methodology used in these works is similar to the one applied in this study. The seismic behaviour of buildings in Barcelona (Spain) [10][11] was analysed via the capacity spectrum.”

Also, you stated that this methodology is similar – could you please explain differences and highlight what is the contribution of the provided research?

It is imported to highlight the novelty of the research since it has not been highlighted enough in the Introduction.

The following sentence should be more precise (page6, line 125): “School buildings have a high seismic vulnerability due to several aspects.” Please, specify which schools?

This statement should be referenced (page 7, line 166):

“There is a large number of studies about seismic retrofitting techniques applied to theoretical models and laboratory analysis.”

Possible literature where this statement could be find in:

Hadzima-Nyarko, M.; Ademović, N.; Pavić, G.; Kalman Šipoš, T. Strengthening techniques for masonry structures of cultural heritage according to recent Croatian provisions. Earthquakes and Structures, Vol. 15, No. 5 (2018) 473-485.

The part regarding the modeling of the plastic hinges (from pages 10 and 11 (lines 252-258)) area is a little bit unclear. You specified ASCE and EC8 and reference [38]. What kind of plastic hinges are implemented in the models?

It should be explained better what the authors mean when they say “Specific software”? (it is mentioned also in the figure caption and it is a little bit confusing).

It is suggested that the authors present real pictures of primary schools under consideration when describing the building.

It is suggested that the authors present the period of vibration of modeled building before and after retrofitting.

Reviewer #2: Thank you very much for inviting me to review the manuscript "Specific seismic retrofitting of a compact reinforced concrete building with X-bracings and steel jackets. Application to a primary school in Huelva”

The paper is properly written and the structure is clear.

There are many papers related to the issue of retrofitting and, specifically, retrofitting schools. However, it is interesting that the authors try to obtain the most effective retrofitting scheme considering structural, architectural and constructive parameters. In that sense, I suggest the authors to clearly state that, that is the main novelty of the manuscript. However, I have two major concerns.

Query #1. The authors use two retrofitting techniques: X-bracings and steel jackets. However, there are many other retrofitting solutions in the regulations such as the ATC-40, the FEMA 356 and the EC-08. Why have the authors just selected these two techniques among all the possibilities? This should be clearly justified in the text.

Query #2. In the manuscript, it is explained that large earthquakes (Mw≥6) of long return periods affect this region. In that sense, it would be interesting to compare the response spectrum that they use to obtain the performance point (based on the EC-08 and the Spanish maps) with that of a deterministic approach, this is, using attenuation laws from previous historic earthquakes.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Specific seismic retrofitting of a compact reinforced concrete building with X-bracings and steel jackets. Application to a primary school in Huelva.

PONE-D-20-15119R1

Dear Dr. Morales-Esteban,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Kind regards,

Francisco Martínez-Álvarez

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Thank you for making corrections according to all recommendations and thus improving the manuscript. The article can be published in present form.

Reviewer #2: The manuscript has been corrected according to the reviewer's suggestions, and for this reason and from my point of view, it should be accepted to be published in the journal "plos one"

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If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No