Probabilistic Seismic Multi-hazard Risk and Restoration Modeling for Resilience-informed Decision Making in Railway Networks

ABSTRACT

Transportation systems, such as railways, are considered critical infrastructure. It is essential to identify potential hazards that can affect the functionality of these systems and quantify metrics that can be used for resilience-informed decision-making. This paper develops an integrated probabilistic model for seismic multi-hazard risk and restoration assessment of railway systems by accounting for the effects of seismic waves propagation, liquefaction and landslide as main phenomena affecting the integrity of distributed networked infrastructure; this is done via a GIS-based user interface. An illustrative case study is then presented to assess the seismic risk and restoration of the Tehran-Sari railway in Iran. The implementation results demonstrate the capability of the presented methodology to quantify physical metrics (including combined damage state of network components, component- and system-level functionality and restoration) and economic loss. These metrics can assist officials with implementing retrofit plans to reduce loss and improve the resilience of railway system segments.

KEYWORDS:

• Natural disaster management
• probabilistic-based analyses
• railway network
• seismic multi-hazard risk assessment
• infrastructure resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Saeideh Farahani

Saeideh Farahani has a PhD in Civil Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran; she is currently a postdoctoral fellow. Her research interests include Earthquake Engineering and Resilient Infrastructure.

Ali Shojaeian

Ali Shojaeian is a PhD student in Civil Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, USA. His research interests include Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, Risk Assessment, and Reliability-based Design.

Behrouz Behnam

Behrouz Behnam is Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran. His research interests include Disaster Management, Fire Engineering and Risk-based Design.

Milad Roohi

Milad Roohi is Assistant Professor in the Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Omaha, USA. His research interests include Infrastructure Resilience, Structural Health Monitoring and Structural Dynamics Catastrophe Modeling.