Seismic Response of Underground Lifeline Systems

This paper presents and discusses the recent developments related to seismic performance and assessment of buried pipelines. The experience from the performance of pipelines during last earthquakes provided invaluable information and lead to new developments in the analysis and technologies. Especially, the pipeline performance during Canterbury earthquake sequence in New Zealand is taken as a case study here. The data collected for the earthquake sequence are unprecedented in size and detail, involving ground motion recordings from scores of seismograph stations, high resolution light detection and ranging (LiDAR) measurements of vertical and lateral movements after each event, and detailed repair records for thousands of km of underground pipelines with coordinates for the location of each repair. One of the important learnings from the recent earthquakes is that some earthquake resistant design and technologies proved to be working. This provides a motivation to increase international exchange and cooperation on earthquake resistant technologies. Another observation is that preventive maintenance is important to reduce the pipeline damage risk from seismic and other hazards. To increase the applicability and sustainability, seismic improvements should be incorporated into the pipe replacement and asset management programs as part of the preventive maintenance concept. However, it is also important to put in the most proper pipeline from the start as replacing or retrofitting the pipelines later requires substantial investment. In this respect, seismic considerations should be taken into account properly in the design phase

La Geo-Localizzazione come elemento unificante delle azioni e delle informazioni per i servizi ai cittadini

Oggigiorno è necessario spostare l’attenzione dal riferimento topografico, proprio degli esperti, alla conoscenza e alla comprensione di un luogo da parte di tutti. Ciò renderà i servizi per i cittadini semplici da usare, efficienti, svincolati da limiti o confini ed in grado di comunicare attraverso lo stesso linguaggio, cosicché l’informazione passerà facilmente dalla dimensione globale a quella locale e viceversa, in un flusso continuo che garantisce la qualità dei servizi e della vita dei cittadini a seguito della efficace responsabilizzazione della Pubblica Amministrazione. Molti sono i temi ad essa correlati, fra cui l’info-mobilità, la conoscenza e la gestione degli edifici, il geocoding, il supporto per categorie speciali di utenti, i dati generati da sensori, l’accesso e l’usabilità dei dati.Nowadays it is necessary to shift the focus from the topography, typical of experts, to the knowledge and understanding of a location by all users. This will make the services for citizens simple to use, efficient, free from limits or boundaries and able to communicate through the same language, so that the information will pass easily from the global to local dimension and vice versa, in a continuous flow that ensures quality of services and life of citizens as a result of effective responsibility of the Public Administration. There are many issues related to it, including the info-mobility, building knowledge and management, geocoding, support for special categories of users, the data generated by sensors, access and usability of data