Seismic vulnerability and resilience assessment of urban telecommunication networks

Abstract

Telecommunication infrastructures provide essential services to urban communities. During an emergency caused by a seismic event, their functionality is crucial to guarantee communication among users and also facilitate search and rescue operations. In this paper, a methodology to model and quantify the seismic vulnerability and resilience of wireless telecommunication networks is presented. The case study is a virtual city resembling a typical medium-sized European city. Three separate networks managed by as many mobile network operators have been designed out of information gathered from a crowdsourced database and visual satellite inspections. The interdependence with the built environment is taken into account by associating the failure of network components with the collapse of the buildings hosting them. Three vulnerability indexes for the resilience analysis of urban telecommunication networks have been defined considering failed telecommunication towers, throughput, and the number of users per base station. They have been calculated after four seismic scenarios with different characteristics and intensities.