EAPSI:Post-Earthquake Resilience Assessment of Civil Infrastructure Utilizing Satellite Imagery

Furtado Mark N, Taunton MA

Investigators

Abstract

Modern society depends heavily on the reliability of critical infrastructure networks. Natural disasters such as earthquakes can cause sudden and widespread disruptions to these networks at a time when the community needs them most. It is of paramount importance that these networks be repaired as soon as possible after an earthquake. However, during the chaos following an earthquake, the time required to identify earthquake damage on a large scale hinders the repair process. Satellite and aerial imaging allows for a large-scale visual assessment that could allow for a quick assessment of damage in a very short time after an earthquake. This research project will collaborate with Dr. Fumio Yamazaki of Chiba University in Chiba, Japan. Dr. Yamazaki is a leading researcher in the use of aerial, satellite and other imaging to assess earthquake damage. Disaster resilience has become a hot topic in recent years and has caught the attention of governments and decision makers on the highest of levels. A resilient community should be able to absorb the impact of a disaster and recover in a timely fashion. The researchers involved have extensively studied the resilience of transportation networks after earthquake events. This includes creating damage estimation models for simulation earthquakes, quantifying repair costs and driver delay, determining priority infrastructure components for repair and utilizing alternative repair techniques to repair these priority components as quickly as possible. Common in resilience study however is a lack of understanding of the state of the network immediately after the event. This means that assumptions are made, such as decision makers having perfect knowledge of the damage state of the network, which may lead to an underestimate of the expected cost of an earthquake and overstate the network?s resilience. Incorporating damage assessment based on the aforementioned imaging techniques into the post-disaster recovery model serves to help overcome this problem. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.