In 2019, the Applied Technology Council completed the ATC-142 project, conducted for the World Bank Global Program for Safer Schools (GPSS). The objective of the project was to provide technical support to Component 2 of World Bank financed Enhancing Resilience in Kyrgyzstan (ERIK) project, “Improving the safety of school infrastructure (US$ 12-13M),” aimed at the safety and functionality of schools in areas of highest seismic hazard in Kyrgyz Republic. ATC and GPSS jointly created a risk-based framework to prioritize schools that had been shortlisted for remediation under criteria established by the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Ministry of Education, and State Agency for Architecture, Construction, and Communal Services of the Kyrgyz Republic. This paper describes the development of the framework and its results based on available information. The framework acknowledges that there are various approaches to select schools to improve given limited funds: a few schools can be made very safe, more schools can be made safe, or many schools can have their safety improved, even if not to meet modern minima. The framework addresses the complex problem of how to efficiently invest in seismic safety, based largely on the utilitarian criterion of maximizing the number of statistical lives saved per dollar spent or equivalently minimizing the cost per life saved.

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