Resilience of Highway Networks To Earthquake Loads

Abstract eng:
This paper deals with the assessment of intercity road networks resilience to earthquake loading. The motivation for this work is the fact that, as recent strong earthquakes have highlighted, the integrity of key transportation components, such as bridges, tunnels and geotechnical works has a great impact on the ability of the network to restore its original functionality and to limit the overall loss incurred by the community. The latter is defined as the direct structural, damage-related, loss as well as the indirect loss associated with the prolonged traffic disruption and the wider socio-economical consequences in the affected area. The above aspects of seismically-induced loss are particularly pronounced in cases of developed societies with extended and coupled intercity infrastructure wherein the interdependency between citizens and functionality of the numerous critical road components is extended. Quantifying therefore, the ability of the road network to withstand, adapt to, and rapidly recover after a disruptive event is a challenging issue of paramount importance towards holistic disaster management. Along these lines, this paper presents a comprehensive, multi-criterion framework for assessing road network resilience to earthquakes and mitigating the timevariant loss experienced by the community after an earthquake event. In order to reflect the multi-layered nature of loss, a set of novel, qualitative, time-variant metrics is herein introduced, while quantitative indicators are used for cumulatively assessing the total loss incurred throughout the entire recovery period. The above probabilistic framework consists a holistic risk management tool for making informed decisions both pre- and post- a major earthquake event, thus prioritizing the predisruption strengthening schemes and accelerating the inspection and recovery measures, respectively. The methodological framework and its associated indicators are developed analytically but are also transformed in the form of a user friendly, GIS-based freeware available to the engineering community.

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