Post-Earthquake Performance of Interdependent Electric Power and Water Supply Systems

Abstract eng:
This paper applies a generalized framework for modelling interdependent infrastructure system performance to a case study of the electric power and water supply systems in Christchurch, New Zealand. Based on geospatial exposure data provided by infrastructure operators, the case study identifies the key assets in each system and selects appropriate fragility functions. These are applied along with existing hazard prediction methods to first measure the performance of each system independently and then interdependencies are accounted for by two methods: supply area and proximity. A new interdependency response metric is proposed to measure the magnitude of the interdependency effect of electric power on water supply with minimal computation. For a 10,000-year stochastic earthquake catalogue the electric power network exhibits high resilience with system performance issues arising in less than 3% of events. Exceedance probability curves show that the water supply system is less resilient, due to the effect of ground shaking and liquefaction on pipelines, and that for this case study, the method for modelling interdependency makes little difference to the results. The interdependency metric calculated for each event is low in most cases. However, regression analysis shows a strong linear trend between the interdependency metric and the loss metric for the electric power network and this observation may be exploited in future to develop a simple method for predicting the interdependency effect between any two systems without full simulation.

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