Preliminary proposal of a probabilistic framework for the post-earthquake performance assessment of road networks

The safety of infrastructural systems is of paramount importance since high socio-economic impacts would be expected in case of disruptions or, even worse, people life could be seriously endangered in case of severe damages or collapses. The relevance of the issue at hand pushed the scientific community to develop increasingly accurate probabilistic tools for the risk assessment, with particular attention to the vulnerability of existing bridges, which may show different damage mechanisms and which can lead multiple post-disaster scenarios. Then, the quantification of consequences plays a fundamental role in the forecast of the optimal intervention strategy to minimize the losses not only at local but also at network level. In this paper, a probabilistic framework for the post-earthquake performance assessment of road networks is preliminary proposed and an overview of the multiple steps that differently contribute to the final quantification of losses is provided. A preliminary application of the proposed framework is illustrated referring to one of the major road networks in the Marche region, in Central Italy. Results show the potentiality of the framework in the description of the post-disaster consequences for which monetary indicators are proposed relatively to indirect costs of practical interest. Moreover, the framework reveals sufficiently flexible to be used also in case of natural hazards other than the seismic one and to be furtherly expanded taking into account additional aspects affecting the bridges performances. (c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.