Multihazard risk modeling of civil infrastructure systems

Our built environment is often subjected to multiple hazards’ concurrent and/or sequential impacts. Modeling multi-hazard interactions (i.e., possible interrelationships and interdependencies of hazard events with their associated frequencies and severities and potential impacts on a specific location or region) and simulating multi-hazard scenarios (i.e., realizations of possible multi-hazard interactions) to design and assess civil infrastructure is crucial. We have developed a probabilistic framework for simulating multi-hazard scenarios for civil infrastructure design and risk assessment. The framework efficiently characterizes the interrelationships and interdependencies between primary and secondary hazards using a series of occurrence models for the primary and secondary hazards and simulation-based approaches to generate the arrival times and features (e.g., severity) of all considered hazards over a defined space-time interval. Our proposed framework can help decision-makers design and test efficient disaster mitigation and management policies.

 

We are currently conducting case studies to combine the developed multihazard scenario generator  with vulnerability/impact assessment methodologies to quantify the multi-hazard risk of communities.

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Relevant papers are currently under review in reputable journals.