Development of Exclusive Seismic Fragility Curves for Critical Infrastructure: An Oil Pumping Station Case Study

Abstract

Fragility curves are a common tool to appraise the expected damage to critical infrastructure (CI) after an earthquake event. Previous studies offer fragility curve parameters for CI that are suitable for a vast range of systems, without an in-depth examination of the system architecture and subcomponents. These curves are applicable in cases where a thorough analysis is not required or when the information related to a single system is poor. This paper proposes an original approach and presents a comprehensive methodology for developing exclusive fragility curves for critical infrastructure systems. In the proposed methodology, the fragility curves are developed by a decomposition of the system into its main subcomponents and determination of the failure mechanisms. The derivation of the fragility parameters includes failure analysis for each damage state by a Fault Tree Analysis and approximation of the fragility parameters in accordance with the rate of exceedance. The implementation of the methodology is demonstrated by a case study with three alternatives of an oil pumping plant configuration. It was found that a change of a subcomponent has an effect on the derived values of the fragility parameters. Moreover, the variances in the fragility parameters have implications for the effectiveness of each alternative to resist different levels of severity.

A Comprehensive Approach to Earthquake-Resilient Infrastructure: Integrating Maintenance with Seismic Fragility Curves

“…Many studies have focused on the development and application of seismic fragility curves for different types of infrastructure, including different types of buildings [13][14][15] and special structures, such as churches [16], bridges [17], different steel tanks [18][19][20], power grids [21], water networks [22], transportation infrastructure [23], oil-pumping stations [9], and concrete dams [24]. The fragility curves are developed regarding various factors, such as the geometry of the elements, the materials, the overall capacity of the system, and several other factors.…”

“…The fragility curve represents the probability that a component or system will reach or exceed a given damage state as a function of an earthquake's intensity-measure (IM) parameter, such as peak ground acceleration (PGA), peak ground velocity (PGV), and peak ground displacement (PGD) [7]. Fragility curves can be used for individual components or the entire systems [8,9].…”

Seismic Risk Mitigation and Management for Critical Infrastructures using an RMIR Indicator

“…The exclusive fragility allows to perform a customized in-depth risk analysis and later to examine the effectiveness of various retrofit alternatives. The exclusive curves are derived following the methodology presented in [44].…”

“…This chapter presents an implementation of the methodology through a pumping station facility case study. This case study is based on the generic pumping station presented in [44]. The generic pumping station is composed of four main subcomponents that are vital for the functionality of the pumping station: building, pumps, electro-mechanical equipment, and power supply.…”

Application of a Deep Learning Method to the Seismic Vulnerability Analysis of Cross-Fault Hydraulic Tunnels Based on MLE-IDA

“…Soleimani and Liu [24] used the ANN method for predictive PSDMs using a reputable ML approach. Urlainis and Shohet [25,26] developed the fragility parameters via a failure analysis for each damage state, using a Fault Tree Analysis and approximation of the fragility parameters in accordance with the rate of exceedance. Xu et al [27] proposed an artificial neural network framework to simultaneously predict the nonlinear seismic responses of all buildings in a cluster subjected to multi-earthquake inputs.…”