Closure to “A cantilever approach to estimate bending stiffness of buildings affected by tunnelling” by Twana K. Haji, Alec M. Marshall, and Walid Tizani

The discussion of Franza and DeJong (2018) raises some interesting points. 1 The discussion covers three main areas, namely [1] the proposed method for 2 estimating building bending stiffness, [2] the assumed boundary condition for 3 the building base columns, and [3] the utilisation of the proposed method. 4 Below are some additional comments organised according to these points. 5 [1] Franza and DeJong (2018) highlighted that the point-load analogy (i.e. 6 bending stiffness = force/deflection) used in Haji et al. (2018) to develop 7 equations for estimating the bending stiffness of a building includes the 8 effect of shear and bending deformations, and referred to this as the ‘total 9 stiffness’. It was suggested that the contribution of shear and bending should 10 be distinguished for the evaluation of building bending stiffness, which is 11 sensible. We simply note that the intention of the proposed method was not 12 to follow a strict analytical scheme; it is intended as a simplified approach 13 to estimate building bending stiffness that attains a good level of accuracy 14 (by virtue of its development with rigorous numerical analyses) and is able 15