Seismic safety evaluation of electric power supply at urban level

Abstract

In past works the authors set up a refined model for electric power networks under earthquake action. The procedure models the fragility of components with respect to earthquake action, the complex behaviour of the stations and the network, the power flow, the network capability to feed the nodes in a damaged condition, the earthquake damage on the territory, the need to deliver electric power to the municipalities where most damage has occurred. In later works the method was improved towards design goals: nonetheless complexity of the network seismic behaviour, a procedure to maximize safety of selected nodes and minimize economic expenses was constructed, allowing identification of which components, within each station, had to be upgraded to obtain the maximum economic convenience. The procedure was programmed within the ASK4ELP computer code (National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A., 1999) using late 1990s state-of-the-art knowledge for both the earthquake and the structural behaviour models.Recently the method has gone through a thorough updating, partially still in progress. Among the results, it is now more clear how important is a correct soil geotechnical model to predict the system response and safety. This paper presents, together with a short summary of the ASK4ELP procedure, these latest advancements and results and shows, through a real example, the sensitivity of the predicted safety to soil modelling.

Seismic vulnerability of lifelines in the greater Lisbon area

“…Other previous studies also used a mechanicist approach (Vanzi 2000;Nuti et al 2007) to analyse substation equipments. Vanzi evaluated the fragility curves of electric equipments as a function of the peak ground acceleration.…”

Seismic Safety Evaluation of Historical Centres

“…Various procedures for the safety evaluation of network systems like electric powers, roads, hospital regional systems or hospitals, bridges or strategic buildings, were proposed in literature [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Reliability Analysis of Urban Water Systems Under Seismic Action

“…In the past research (Decanini et al, 2004;Nuti et al, 2007;Nuti et al, 2010) [4,14,16] a combination of the aforementioned measures was used for the seismic assessment of networks, on the basis of a judgmental choice of which one was the best in the case at study. The choice, in this study, to use the peak ground velocity, PGV as main parameter for the representation of the seismic action at site will be commented in the next section, since this topic is strictly related with damage representation.…”