24 - Seismic risk assessment of water supply systems

Abstract

Water supply is vital to the function of an industrialized society and important to emergency response and recovery after earthquakes. Water supply systems and other civil infrastructure systems are intricately linked with the economic well-being, security, and social fabric of communities. This chapter deals with seismic risk assessment of water supply systems. A general framework for evaluating seismic risk of water supply systems is presented. The framework contains five steps and includes seismic hazard characterizations, system property characterizations, component response evaluation, system response evaluation, and consequence assessment. The assessment makes use of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis, theoretical and empirical models to estimate pipeline response, hydraulic analysis for heavily damaged water systems, and multi-scale simulations of complex water systems. Each of these steps is described separately, and the water supply system in Los Angeles, one of the largest water supply systems in the world, is used to illustrate these assessment steps. In addition, sources of further information and future trends are briefly commented.