Functionality‐fragility surfaces

Abstract

SummaryThe evaluation of functionality and its evolution in the aftermath of extreme events and during the restoration phase is a critical step in disaster resilience assessment. To this respect, this paper presents the ‘Functionality‐Fragility Surface’ (FFS), which is a tool for probabilistic functionality and resilience evaluation of damaged structures, infrastructure systems, and communities. FFS integrates two well‐known tools, namely Fragility Curves and Restoration Functions, to present the probability of loss of functionality of a system as a function of the extreme‐event intensity, as well as the elapsed time from the initiation of the restoration process. Because of their versatility, FFSs can be applied to components and systems belonging to different infrastructure sectors (e.g., transportation, power distribution, and telecommunication), so they provide a common rigorous paradigm for integrated resilience analyses of multiple sectors, as well as for studies on interdependencies within and across sectors. While it is shown that FFSs can be developed using available data and simple computations for different types of structures and infrastructure systems, this paper proposes also a sophisticated simulation‐based methodology to develop FFSs for individual bridges, taking into account the uncertainties involved in the response, damage, and restoration scheduling of bridges. A Multi‐Span Simply Supported Steel Girder bridge is used to showcase the application of the proposed methodology. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.