An Indirect Loss Estimation Methodology to Account for Regional Earthquake Damage to Highway Bridges

An Indirect Loss Estimation Methodology to Account for Regional Earthquake Damage to Highway Bridges
Author: Chakkaphan Tirasirichai
Publisher:
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2007
Genre: Bridges
ISBN:

"This study proposes an integrated framework to estimate the indirect economic loss due to damaged bridges within the highway system from an earthquake event. The framework is designed to be general and convenient to apply to other study regions. In this dissertation, a simulated earthquake scenario centered in St. Louis Missouri with a magnitude 7.0 was used as a case study. The research results have clearly shown that the indirect losses are significant when compared to the direct loss. Policymakers can apply this study framework and the results as a guide and decision tool for developing an appropriate preventive action plan to reduce the risk and potential losses before the earthquake occurs"--Abstract, p. iii.

A Data-driven Seismic Damage Assessment Framework of Regional Highway Bridges

A Data-driven Seismic Damage Assessment Framework of Regional Highway Bridges
Author: Dong Wang
Publisher:
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2020
Genre:
ISBN:

Recent earthquake disasters have demonstrated the seismic vulnerability of highway bridge systems. Rapid seismic assessment of regional highway bridges is critical to help reduce severe loss of life and property. However, measurement of the regional scale system performance faces the challenge of dealing with the large uncertainty in structural properties and spatial characteristics. Traditionally, the numerical modeling approaches are established to simulate nonlinear response for each highway bridge across a regional portfolio. This process is largely limited by accuracy of model and computational effort. Especially some key structural component parameters are almost impossible to be retrieved for some ancient bridges. An alternative data-driven framework is developed to predict seismic responses or damage level of bridges using machine learning techniques. The proposed hierarchically structured framework enables a customized application in different scenarios. Firstly, the typical modeling technique for reinforcement concrete highway bridges is introduced using specific elements for different components. However, the modeling procedures are material-level parameter dependent and time consuming. The nonlinear analysis convergence is also a frustrating problem for numerical simulations. Due to these realistic limitations, a simple, fast and robust numerical model which can be developed with only component-level information needs to be adopted. It's shown that the bridge bent representation can be simplified as a single degree of freedom system. The force-displacement relationship of the bridge can be roughly approximated by a bilinear curve. So a simplified 2D bilinear model is adopted for highway bridges throughout the study. Secondly, the statistical distributions for selected bridge input parameters can be derived based on the regional bridge inventory. Then an iterative process by sampling and filtering input parameters can be used to generate as many bridges as possible candidates for a specific region. The proposed bridge models and selected historical ground motions will be utilized to develop a seismic response prediction model using machine learning for instrumented highway bridges. This study investigates the optimal features to represent the highway bridge and ground motion. Different regression models are applied for near-fault motions and far-field motions and similar performance can be achieved, which significantly outperformed the traditional methods. Finally, to predict the seismic response of the non-instrumented highway bridges whose ground motion information is missing, the kriging interpolation model is implemented first. Then graph network is exploited to improve the performance. Different rules are evaluated for constructing an undirected graph for the highway bridges in an active seismic region. Subsequently, the Node2vec model is conducted to extract the embedding for each node and a graph neural network is implemented to predict the seismic response. Furthermore, vast amounts of text description data from online social platforms can be used to help detect the potential severely damaged bridges rapidly once an earthquake happens. A Convolution Neural Network classification model is implemented to evaluate the overall damage level distribution based on the collected text data. GloVe model is used to generate the word vector as its distributed representation.

Prediction of Indirect Losses, Direct Losses, and Seismic Resilience of Aging Highway Bridges

Prediction of Indirect Losses, Direct Losses, and Seismic Resilience of Aging Highway Bridges
Author: Lindeon Davis
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

Natural disasters over the past decades, especially earthquakes, have caused varying levels of devastation to transportation systems around our nation. Bridges are typically the most vulnerable components of the transportation network during severe seismic excitations. Bridges are also prone to other natural phenomena that can lead to significant damage to its structural health over its intended or reduced life span. Some of these natural phenomena cause the bridge to "age", affecting the overall bridge performance resulting in partial to complete bridge failure. One way a bridge responds to either phenomenon is characterized by its resilience.Within the scope of this study, one of the primary focuses was to assess a bridge sector for a pre-defined seismic event to estimate the financial costs. The full extent of the damage to this bridge does not only surround the costs associated with the bridge rehabilitation, but it also includes the costs associated with the delays faced by bridge users and the impacted highway network. These costs are just one of the factors that influence the seismic resilience of a given bridge system. The seismic resilience of a bridge relates to how well the bridge performs during seismic activity and the length of time it takes to reach some percentage of its original functionality. This resilience can be predicted with mathematical derivations that incorporate the results of a vulnerability analysis of the bridge for a given ground excitation, an assessment of the costs incurred from the earthquake damage, and an in depth look into how the bridge recovers.Throughout this thesis, the seismic resilience of the targeted bridge sector will be further investigated for each of the three factors. However, the first intended outcome of this research is to shed light on a comprehensive recovery model for variable bridge damage and to create a MATLAB function that can compute direct and indirect losses given specified data inputs. In addition, a secondary outcome is to apply these findings to a bridge network that experienced aging over its life cycle due to the corrosion of structural steel components.

Seismic Risk Mitigation Strategies for Complex Regional Transport Networks

Seismic Risk Mitigation Strategies for Complex Regional Transport Networks
Author: Gitanjali Bhattacharjee
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021
Genre:
ISBN:

Like the systems that supply residents of an area with power, water, sanitation, and communication services, road networks, which provide transport, are lifelines (Chang, 2016). Earthquakes can result in extensive damage to road networks and, in California, have historically caused significant damage to bridges (Mitchell et al., 1995). The immediate goal of seismically retrofitting a bridge is to mitigate the risk of the bridge experiencing structural damage during an earthquake (e.g., Buckle et al., 2006). Seismically retrofitting a bridge reduces the probability that it will be damaged by ground shaking in an earthquake -- and, consequently, the probability that it will incur repair costs or contribute to the indirect costs associated with road network disruptions. Retrofitting bridges has been shown to be a cost-effective method of mitigating the risk of bridge damage (e.g., Giovinazzi et al., 2011). Given budget constraints, retrofitting every bridge in a regional road network subject to seismic hazard is infeasible. How to decide which bridges within such a network to retrofit has therefore proven to be a problem of enduring interest. Complicating factors include the scale of the real-world problem, which precludes exhaustive searches, uncertainty in the seismic hazard and associated bridge damage, the link between bridges' states and the performance of the road network, and the computational cost of simulating road network performance. This dissertation proposes probabilistic and computationally tractable methods for performance-based seismic risk mitigation of complex regional road networks. First, this dissertation proposes a method for prioritizing bridge retrofits within a regional road network subject to uncertain seismic hazard, using a technique that accounts for network performance while avoiding the combinatoric costs of exhaustive searches. Using global variance-based sensitivity analysis (SA), bridges are ranked according to how much their retrofit statuses influence the expected cost of road network disruption, as measured by their total-order sensitivity (Sobol') indices. In a case study of 71 bridges in San Francisco, the proposed method identifies more effective retrofits than other heuristic retrofit prioritization strategies. The proposed method also remains computationally tractable while accounting for uncertainty in the seismic hazard, the stochastic nature of bridge damage, the uniqueness of individual bridges, network effects, and decision-makers' priorities, including budget considerations (but not constraints). As this method leverages existing risk assessment tools and models without imposing further assumptions, it should be extensible to other types of networks, hazards, and decision variables. Second, this dissertation proposes a method with which to increase the computational tractability of the SA-based bridge retrofit prioritization method when the decision variable of interest requires traffic simulation. To more efficiently compute bridges' Sobol' indices, a neural network is trained to serve as a surrogate model for a traffic simulator. For the same set of 71 bridges in San Francisco previously studied, a retrofit strategy based on bridges' total-order Sobol' indices computed using the surrogate model agrees closely with a strategy based on indices computed using only the traffic simulator while reducing the computational time required by as much as 99%. A surrogate model-based approach is also effective at prioritizing bridge retrofits for a set of 141 highway bridges in two Bay Area counties. Leveraging the power of surrogate models to reduce the computational burden of estimating bridges' total-order Sobol' indices will allow application of the SA-based retrofit prioritization method to larger numbers of bridges and larger sets of earthquake scenarios. It will also enable the use of more sophisticated traffic models to characterize network performance. Third, this dissertation integrates two measures of how post-earthquake road network disruption impacts individuals with a probabilistic seismic risk assessment framework in a computationally tractable way. Impacts on individual commuters are characterized using welfare loss, which is a measure of individual well-being and was previously formulated by Mackie et al. (2001), and the number of jobs affected by road network disruption, a novel measure. A case study of the San Francisco Bay Area shows that while all commuters have a similar risk of increased travel time due to post-earthquake road network disruption, commuters with low incomes have substantially higher risk of welfare loss than commuters with high incomes. Traditional metrics of road network disruption like travel time delay, infeasible trips, or combinations thereof obscure these disparate impacts. Quantitative risk metrics that account for variations in individuals' experiences without becoming computationally impracticable should prove useful in reducing risk to regional infrastructure networks in more equitable ways. A novel method for modifying post-earthquake commute demand to account for business interruptions is also presented. This method allows us to better distinguish between the impacts of road network disruption and the impacts of building damage on workers in a region, which is necessary to design effective risk reduction policies. Lastly, this dissertation includes a study of earthquake responders' building damage information needs and use. Although many responders need to understand the scale and distribution of building damage to react effectively, their building damage information needs and information use remain poorly understood, limiting the efficacy of information production, sharing, and research. Based on interview data and questionnaire responses gathered from experienced responders, six post-disaster tasks that rely on building damage information are characterized by their timing and by the necessary qualities of the information they require. Through inductive analysis of the interview data, responders' use of building damage information is also found to depend on factors beyond the building damage information itself -- namely, trust, impediments to information sharing, their varying understandings of disaster, and their attitudes toward emerging technologies. These factors must be considered in the design of any effort to create and/or disseminate post-disaster building damage information.

Advanced Computing Strategies for Engineering

Advanced Computing Strategies for Engineering
Author: Ian F. C. Smith
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 502
Release: 2018-06-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3319916386

This double volume set ( LNAI 10863-10864) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 25th International Workshop, EG-ICE 2018, held in Lausanne, Switzerland, in June 2018. The 58 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 108 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on Advanced Computing in Engineering, Computer Supported Construction Management, Life-Cycle Design Support, Monitoring and Control Algorithms in Engineering, and BIM and Engineering Ontologies.

Performance-based Seismic Bridge Design

Performance-based Seismic Bridge Design
Author: M. Lee Marsh
Publisher: Transportation Research Board
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2013
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0309223806

"TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 440, Performance-Based Seismic Bridge Design (PBSD) summarizes the current state of knowledge and practice for PBSD. PBSD is the process that links decision making for facility design with seismic input, facility response, and potential facility damage. The goal of PBSD is to provide decision makers and stakeholders with data that will enable them to allocate resources for construction based on levels of desired seismic performance"--Publisher's description.