Post-earthquake Restoration of Water Supply Infrastructure

Abstract

This study attempts to develop a resilience-based recovery model of water supply system against earthquake events. Our objective is to sequence repairs to maximize system restoration through water delivery to critical locations or to maximize the number of served customers in the shortest time period given multiple failures. For these purposes, a computer simulation model can be helpful in examining restoration strategies in a risk-free and virtual environment under a range of possible emergency scenarios. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine the effectiveness of key restoration strategies for emergency preparedness plans. Furthermore, it is envisioned that this simulation model can be used in conjunction with other pre-event and/or post-event loss reduction strategies for the design of robust and resilient water supply infrastructure and optimization of restoration strategies. The proposed methodology depicts the real-life restoration process thus can be used by planners, engineers, and decision makers to better serve the community. INTRODUCTION Earthquake is a very rare event but can damage water supply system significantly and cause system interruption for a long time period and suspend system service. There are two ways to mitigate the effect of earthquake. One is to design system resistant to the event and the other is to quickly restore the damaged system after the event occurs. The former is done by strengthen the system so the system can resist the outer interruption without failure. The latter focuses on the recovery of the system to minimize the consequences when the event occurs. This study focuses on the efforts to reduce the restoration time and recover the system’s function in efficient way. Recognizing potential earthquake damage, water utilities have to develop systemspecific post-earthquake restoration strategies to minimize its consequences. For critical location, parallel lines can be installed (or new pipes of earthquake resistant material can be introduced) to provide additional redundancy in the system and consequently mitigate earthquake damage and resulting water outages. For these purposes, a computer simulation model can be helpful in examining restoration strategies in a risk-free, virtual environment, under a range of possible earthquake scenarios. The goal of this study is to develop a computer-based seismic restoration model to evaluate the effectiveness of key restoration strategies; thus, this study will 913 World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2013: Showcasing the Future © ASCE 2013