System loss assessment of bridge networks accounting for multi-hazard interactions

Abstract

This paper details an integrated method for the multi-hazard risk assessment of road infrastructure systems exposed to potential earthquake and flood events. A harmonisation effort is required to reconcile bridge fragility models and damage scales from different hazard types: this is achieved by the derivation of probabilistic functionality curves, which express the probability of reaching or exceeding a loss level given the seismic intensity measure. Such probabilistic tools are essential for the loss assessment of infrastructure systems, since they directly provide the functionality losses instead of the physical damage states. Multi-hazard interactions at the vulnerability level are ensured by the functionality loss curves, which result from the assembly of hazard-specific fragility curves for local damage mechanisms. At the hazard level, the potential overlap between earthquake and flood events is represented by a time window during which the effects of one hazard type on the infrastructure may still be present: the value of this temporal parameter is based on the repair duration estimates provided by the functionality loss curves. The proposed framework is implemented through Bayesian Networks, thus enabling the propagation of uncertainties and the computation of joint probabilities. The procedure is demonstrated on a bridge example and a hypothetical road network.

Keywords:

• Bayesian Networks
• bridges
• functional losses
• fragility curves
• multi-hazard interactions
• road networks