Resilience Of Civil Infrastructure Research Articles

Unraveling Debris-Enhanced Local Scour Patterns around Non-Cylindrical Bridge Piers: Experimental Insights and Innovative Modeling

Bridge structures face a critical threat from localized scour-induced damage, prompting urgent attention to civil infrastructure resilience. Prior research has primarily focused on the influence of pier shapes on scour patterns. However, the exploration of the combined effects of various debris shapes, each possessing distinct properties, on predictive scour depth models around the non-cylindrical pier has hitherto remained less researched. This study explored the complex dynamics governing local scour around bridge piers, focusing on the influence of surface and near-surface debris. This research shed light on changes in scour depth by investigating factors like pier geometries, debris arrangements, and submersion depths. The experiments and analysis revealed the effects of various pier shapes—cylindrical, square, rectangular, oblong, oval, and lenticular—on scour patterns. Different geometries influenced primary scour zones and affected areas, with square piers causing the deepest scour and lenticular ones showing shallower instances. Scour depths typically peaked upstream across geometries, but ogival and lenticular shapes exhibited unique patterns. The research also introduced a formula that integrated debris attributes into predictive scour depth modeling, validated with favorable accuracy. Ultimately, this predictive model advances scour prediction, particularly in debris-laden flows, offering valuable insights for engineering and management practices in understanding real-world scour mechanisms and hydraulic dynamics.

EDITORIAL SCOPE: GEOTECHNICAL EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING EDITION

One of the main civil engineering disciplines is currently the focus area of the Journal of Civil Engineering, Science, and Technology (JCEST): geotechnical and earthquake engineering. We are honoured to present this editorial focusing on the dynamic and evolving field of geotechnical earthquake engineering, with an emphasis on seismic soil-structure interaction (SSI). These studies offer valuable insights into novel design methodologies, materials, and analysis approaches, which are crucial for ensuring the safety and resilience of infrastructure. This editorial paper collected information from the freely-accessible SCOPUS database to identify common keywords used in published papers pertaining to geotechnical earthquake engineering from 2015 to 2023. The analysis reveals that the ‘seismic’ and ‘structure’ terms are the most frequently utilised keyword in articles related to this field. As the editors of our esteemed journal, it is our privilege to shed light on this critical area of research that plays a pivotal role in ensuring the safety and resilience of civil infrastructure subjected to seismic forces.

Building Resilient Coastal Communities: The NHERI Experimental Facility for Surge, Wave, and Tsunami Hazards

Through the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure program (NHERI) established by the National Science Foundation in the United States, a suite of experimental facilities has been made available to the research community to advance the resilience of civil infrastructure and communities to coastal storm and earthquake hazards. An experimental facility called the NHERI Experimental Facility hosted at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at Oregon State University (HWRL EF) was created through this program that serves as a state-of-the-art engineering research, education, and outreach center related to tsunamis caused by earthquakes and coastal waves and surge caused by windstorms. HWRL EF includes two specialized large-scale resources for physical model testing of coastal systems: a large wave flume (LWF) and a directional wave basin (DWB). These facilities are available to the research community to address grand challenges relating to tsunami and coastal windstorm surge and wave hazards impacting the built and natural environments. This paper describes the capabilities of the HWRL EF and presents 10 example projects conducted under NHERI since 2016. The research projects highlight the broad scientific interest and potential application of physical model testing in multi-hazard mitigation and resilience in coastal communities.

Development of a civil infrastructure resilience assessment framework and its application to a nuclear power plant

Recent disruptive events, such as earthquakes or floods, have caused severe damage to civil infrastructure systems. Thus, there is a need to extend the focus of traditional design practices to include resilience-based design approaches which can help in defining preventive actions and measures to mitigate the consequences caused by such disruptive events. This paper presents a Civil Infrastructure Resilience Assessment Framework (CIRAF) to assess the seismic fragility and resilience of a single or multiple interconnected civil infrastructure systems following a disruptive event. Once the information regarding the infrastructure system, hazards, fragility functions, component's damage state correlation, recovery models, and upgrade models are identified, then the framework can be used to quantify the loss of functionality, recovery time, repair cost, and overall resilience using a Bayesian Network approach. A state-of-the-art engineering tool is also developed using the framework that would enable the stakeholders to compare different upgrade strategies through an easy to use web interface and thus easing the decision-making process. A case study of a hypothetical nuclear power generation system is used to assess the seismic fragility and resilience using the proposed framework.

Resilience as an emergent property of human-infrastructure dynamics: A multi-agent simulation model for characterizing regime shifts and tipping point behaviors in infrastructure systems.

The objective of this study is to establish a framework for analyzing infrastructure dynamics affecting the long-term steady state, and hence resilience in civil infrastructure systems. To this end, a multi-agent simulation model was created to capture important phenomena affecting the dynamics of coupled human-infrastructure systems and model the long-term performance regimes of infrastructure. The proposed framework captures the following three factors that shape the dynamics of coupled human-infrastructure systems: (i) engineered physical infrastructure; (ii) human actors; and (iii) chronic and acute stressors. A complex system approach was adopted to examine the long-term resilience of infrastructure based on the understanding of performance regimes, as well as tipping points at which shifts in the performance regime of infrastructure occur under the impact of external stressors and/or change in internal dynamics. The application of the proposed framework is demonstrated in a case of urban water distribution infrastructure using the data from a numerical case study network. The developed multi-agent simulation model was then used in examining the system resilience over a 100-year horizon under stressors such as population change and funding constraints. The results identified the effects of internal dynamics and external stressors on the resilience landscape of infrastructure systems. Furthermore, the results also showed the capability of the framework in capturing and simulating the underlying mechanisms affecting human-infrastructure dynamics, as well as long-term regime shifts and tipping point behaviors. Therefore, the integrated framework proposed in this paper enables building complex system-based theories for a more advanced understanding of civil infrastructure resilience.

Civil infrastructure resilience: state-of-the-art on transportation network systems

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a synthesis of the state-of-the-art on transportation network resilience. The socio-technical approach associated with resilience evaluation is broad and multidisciplinary, focusing on the network’s ability to sustain functionality and recover speedily after disruptions. The three key problem areas identified in literature were: minimal network-level study applications of resilience; insufficient practical methods in quantifying the recovery phase of resilience; and the need for the development of resilience indexes demonstrated on real-life regional network models. The authors of this paper recommend that: further investigative efforts are directed towards the post-disaster phases of resilience; evaluating the applicability of resilience indexes on multiple hazard events for transportation networks is requisite; and the formulation of resilience indexes based on regional network models and variable demand traffic assignment models. Furthermore, collaborative efforts between management authorities and researchers are necessary to facilitate the advancement and enactment of necessary policies to enhance transportation systems’ resilience.

A system-of-systems framework for exploratory analysis of climate change impacts on civil infrastructure resilience

Climate change has various chronic and acute impacts on civil infrastructure systems (CIS). A long-term assessment of resilience in CIS requires understanding the transformation of CIS caused by climate change stressors and adaptation decision-making behaviors of institutional agencies. In addition, resilience assessment for CIS includes significant uncertainty regarding future climate change scenarios and subsequent impacts. Thus, resilience analysis in CIS under climate change impacts need to capture complex adaptive behaviors and uncertainty in order to enable robust planning and decision-making. This paper presents a system-of-systems (SoS) framework for abstraction and integrated modeling of climate change stressors, physical infrastructure performance, and institutional actors’ decision-making processes. The application of the proposed SoS framework is shown in an illustrative example related to the impacts of sea level rise and subsequent saltwater intrusion on a water system. Through the use of the proposed SoS framework, various attributes, processes, and interactions related to physical infrastructure and actor’s decision-making were abstracted and used in the creation of a computational simulation model. Then, the computational model was used to simulate various scenarios composed of sea level rise and adaptation approaches. Through an exploratory analysis approach, the simulated scenario landscape was used to identify robust adaptation pathways that lead to a greater system resilience under future uncertain sea level rise. The results of the illustrative example highlight the various novel capabilities of the SoS framework: (i) abstraction of various attributes and processes that affect the long-term resilience of infrastructure under climate change; (ii) integrated modeling of CIS transformation based on simulating the adaptive decision-making processes, physical infrastructure performance, and climate change impacts; and (iii) exploratory analysis and identification of robust pathways for adaptation to climate change impacts.

Resilience of Civil Infrastructure by Optimal Risk Mitigation

This paper puts forward a framework for optimal mitigation of regional risk to enhance the resilience of civil infrastructure. To meet this objective, probabilistic models, methods, and software are developed and applied. The work is conducted within a new reliability-based approach, in which reliability methods compute risk. This contrasts several contemporary approaches for risk analysis. Risk, in this context, denotes the probability of exceeding monetary loss. Evaluating such probabilities requires probabilistic models for hazards, response, damage, and loss. This motivates the following contributions in this paper. First, a new computer program is developed that is tailored to conduct reliability analysis with many interconnected probabilistic models. It orchestrates the interaction of models through an object-oriented architecture. Second, a library of probabilistic models for regional seismic risk analysis are developed. The library includes new models for earthquake location and magnitude and building response, damage, and loss. Third, probabilistic methods for multi-hazard risk analysis are developed and applied in a large-scale regional analysis. The results are cost exceedance probabilities and insights into the seismic risk of the region. Finally, sensitivity measures are developed to identify the buildings whose retrofit yields the most reduction in regional risk, i.e., the most resilience of the region.

Probabilistic Assessment of Civil Infrastructure Resilience to Earthquakes

AbstractThe large losses occurred in the past due to earthquakes, even in highly developed countries, as well as the ensuing prolonged inactivity of the stricken societies, imparted momentum to research into regional seismic impact and community resilience to earthquakes. Need for comprehensive and consistent modeling is apparent, and this work presents a contribution in this direction. The extension of a recently developed civil infrastructure simulation framework to the evaluation of resilience, as well as the introduction of a new infrastructure network‐based resilience metric represent the novelties of the article and allow one to explore the effect that sources of uncertainty and key vulnerability factors have on the probability distribution of resilience.

Resilience of civil infrastructure systems: literature review for improved asset management

Infrastructure resilience has drawn significant attention in recent years, partly because the occurrence of low-probability and high-consequence disruptive events like Hurricane Katrina, the Indonesian tsunami, terrorism attack in New York, and others. Since civil infrastructure systems support society welfare and viability, continuous infrastructural operation is critical. Along protection approaches, resilience concepts support achievement of near-continuous infrastructure operation. A variety of frameworks, models, and tools exist for advancing infrastructure resilience research. Nevertheless, translation of resilience concepts into practical methodologies for informing civil infrastructure operation and management remains challenging. This paper presents a state-of-the-art literature review on civil infrastructure resilience, particularly water distribution systems, enabling practical applications of infrastructure resilience towards improved system management. The literature review has two stages, quantitative and qualitative. Infrastructure resilience is defined to provide a foundation for operationalisation of infrastructure resilience concepts, enabling the inclusion of practical resilience considerations in formal management systems such as infrastructure asset management systems.