The impact of a PEER funded research project "Probabilistic Regional Seismic Risk Assessment of a Los Angeles Bridge Network Using a New Generation of Fragility Functions" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Henry Burton, Associate Professor and Presidential Chair in Structural Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles. The co-Principal Investigator is Yazhou Xie, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, McGill University. The Research Team includes Janie Padgett, Rice University and Ibbi Almufti, Arup.
Download the Research Project Highlight which includes the abstract (PDF)
Research Impact
The developed bridge risk map can be used by decision-makers to identify emergency routes for first responders to better prepare, plan for, and react to the forthcoming strong earthquake. It can also help Caltrans to assess high-risk areas and prioritize critical bridges for seismic retrofits. In the long term, resilience metrics such as restoration trajectories of traffic capacity and speed limit against each bridge damage state can be added to the analysis workflow to assess to what degree individual bridge performance would affect the resilience of the transportation network, which will improve policy makers’ capability towards more effective resilience planning for the city of LA. Moreover, the existing simulation software tools developed by the SimCenter are mostly customized for building assets. Its simulation capacity will be significantly enhanced by incorporating some of the models developed from the proposed project. This effort will pave the path for engaging the research community worldwide to initiate relevant risk assessment studies for bridge infrastructure.
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