Exploring simulation tools for urban seismic analysis and resilience assessment

Nowadays, the refined models of simulation to evaluate the seismic damage in an urban area are becoming of paramount interest for the scientific community. Regional seismic damage simulation can potentially provide valuable information that can facilitate decision making, enhance planning for disaster mitigation, and reduce human and economic losses. However, the application of refined models is limited because of their high computational cost and needs of highly experienced users. For these reasons, these approaches remain academic experiences. This study proposes a straightforward approach to the problem, at the same time competitive, to simulate the seismic response and to assess the degree of damage at urban scale. At first, the simulation of the standard building is performed using an equivalent single degree of freedom model. Subsequently, the same approach is extended to a number of regular buildings from a virtual city sample for time-history seismic response analysis. The first part of this work is devoted to present the methodology to prepare the one-degree-of-freedom model of the standard building by comparing it with a refined multi degrees of freedom model as a target. Finally, a seismic damage simulation of a virtual city sample is implemented to demonstrate the capacity and advantages of the proposed method at increasing seismic intensities for damage assessment. It is the starting phase for further multi-hazards analyses at the regional scale through agent-based models

Indirect structural health monitoring (iSHM) of transport infrastructure in the digital age

Workshop reportCopyright © Joint Research Centre (European Commission). The existing European motorway infrastructure network is prone to ageing and subject to natural events (e.g. climate change) and hazards (e.g. earthquakes), necessitating immediate actions for its maintenance and safety. Within this context, the structural health monitoring (SHM) framework allows a quantitative assessment of the structural integrity, serviceability and performance, facilitating better-informed decisions for the management of the existing infrastructure. The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) established the exploratory research project MITICA (Monitoring Transport Infrastructures with Connected and Automated vehicles) to investigate the opportunity to use novel methods for infrastructure motoring, aiming at the efficient maintenance of the European aging road infrastructure. This report summarizes the discussion and the outcomes of a workshop held at the JRC in Ispra (Italy) on June 6-7 2022, as part of the MITICA project. Considering the EU priority “A Europe fit for the digital age”, the workshop was dedicated to SHM and its application to civil infrastructure, focusing on innovative indirect structural health monitoring (iSHM) approaches that rely on the vehicle-bridge interaction and the deployment of sensor-equipped vehicles for the monitoring of the existing bridge infrastructure. The report aims to become a reference document in the area of iSHM using passing vehicles, for both scholars and policy makers

Research needs towards a resilient community: Vulnerability reduction, infrastructural systems model, loss assessment, resilience-based design and emergency management

Most of the literature on resilience is devoted to its assessment. It seems time to move from analysis to design, to develop the tools needed to enhance resilience. Resilience enhancement, a close relative of the less fashionable risk mitigation, adds to the latter, at least in the general perception, a systemic dimension. Resilience is often paired with community, and the latter is a system. This chapter therefore discusses strategies to enhance resilience, endorses one of prevention rather than cure, and focuses in the remainder on the role played by systemic analysis, i.e. the analysis of the built environment modelled beyond a simple collection of physical assets, with due care to the associated interdependencies. Research needs are identified and include challenges in network modelling, the replacement of generic fragility curves for components, how to deal with evolving state of information

Seismic performance of health care facilities using discrete event simulation models

The chapter presents a hospital testbed which aims to help the earthquake engineering community moving another step toward the realization and implementation of resilience-based design strategies. An organizational model describing the response of the Hospital Emergency Department (ED) has been implemented using a discrete events simulation model (DES). The waiting time is the main parameter of response and it is used to evaluate the disaster resilience index of healthcare facilities. It has been considered for patients arriving in an Emergency Department after an earthquake, when no emergency plan is activated, to see the response of the hospital and observe its capacity of performing in emergency conditions. The hospital analyzed is the Mauriziano "Umberto I" Hospital, located in downtown Turin, in Italy. The DES model is an important tool in the hospital decision process either for the engineering profession or for the policy maker

Consideration of Resilience of Communities in Structural Design

The paper addresses a design methodology for civil engineering structures, “Resilience-Based Design (RBD)” which evolves from the Performance-Based Design (PBD). Currently engineers approach a structure as if it stands alone, without considering the interaction with the community, which should be regarded as an integrated part of the design process. Indeed, a building structure or a bridge should not be considered anymore alone, but as a group of structures using a “Portfolio Approach” which would allow regional loss analysis. Such approach moves from the concept of “housing units” to the concept of “housing blocks”. The goal of RBD is to make communities as “resilient” as possible, developing technologies and actions that allows each structure and/or community to regain its function as promptly as possible. A framework for disaster management, based on open-closed loop control strategy is introduced to integrate the resilience from structures to community and to decision system applied in the design. The fundamental concepts of community resilience are analysed and a common reference framework is established which is based on the acronym “PEOPLES”, explained further in the paper. Emphasis is given to hazard intensity measures, engineering demand parameters while a performance matrix defining the performance limit thresholds of RBD is proposed. Some applications are shown incorporating both performance and resilience objectives in order to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed strategy

Modelling economic dimension of community resilience

Earthquakes and extreme events in general cause direct and indirect economic effects on every major economic sector of a given community. These effects have grown in the last years due to the increasing interdependency of the infrastructures and make the community more vulnerable to natural and humaninduced disruptive events. Therefore, there is need for metrics and models which are able to describe economic resilience, defined as the ability of a community affected by a disaster to resist at the shock and bounce back to the economy in normal operating conditions. Several attempts have been made in the past to achieve a better measurement and representation of the economic resilience and to find suitable metrics to help decision planning. The most popular methodologies are based on Computable General Equilibrium models (CGE) and Inoperability Input- Output models (IIM). In this study, we analyze these methods, showing advantages and limitations. Finally, a new method is proposed to evaluate economic resilience which is based on equilibrium growth models and compared with other approaches on a specific case study: the San Francisco Bay Area. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 201