WIT Press


Lifeline Seismic Hazards: A GIS Application

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

104

Pages

12

Page Range

381 - 392

Published

2009

Size

2,821 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/ERES090351

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

M. Maugeri, E. Motta, G. Mussumeci & E. Raciti

Abstract

In every urbanized area, lifelines and essential facilities play a very important role and they become essential after natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, landslides and so on. The purpose of this research is to develop a working tool to assess lifeline seismic risk, overlaying information about the studied area’s seismic hazard (referring to a seismic scenario) and lifelines that could expect damage. In damage models parameters are required, some representing pipes, others representing the soil behaviour and finally, at the very least a synthetic parameter representing the seismic hazard of the studied area (PGA, PGV or PGD). The evaluation of the network intrinsic vulnerability will be done in terms of a synthetic parameter called the Repair Rate. PGDs will be evaluated referring to attenuation laws and to earthquake induced slope displacements according to the Newmark approach. An application of the proposed model, developed by GIS techniques, will be applied to the case of a Sicily (Italy) important water network. Keywords: lifelines networks, damage models, attenuation laws, slope instability, Newmark approach. 1 Introduction Lifelines and essential facilities are vital systems for communities in an industrialized society. They can be divided into two categories: utility systems (water, wastewater, gas, telecommunications and electrical power) and transportation systems (highways, railways, airports, ports). Their network structures are often complex (treelike, with loops or mixed) and a different typology of nodes can be found in each system. Moreover, lifelines are often highly inter-dependent. Due to the usual geographical discrepancy between resource and demand, lifeline networks spatial distribution often widely exceeds the urban area. This

Keywords

lifelines networks, damage models, attenuation laws, slope instability, Newmark approach.