A systemic approach for assessing infrastructure component importance in hazard-prone communities

Abstract

Investing in pre-event disaster mitigation interventions for physical infrastructure, such as structural retrofits and enhancements, can be costly due to limited resources. To prioritize investments, infrastructure components are ranked by their criticality within the overall system. To be effective in real-world deployment, this approach must account for the complex interactions between components, as failures can occur simultaneously across large geographical areas due to the hazard footprint. As a result, hazard-specific uncertainties and spatial correlations may lead to distinctive failure patterns. In this study, we propose a novel data-driven framework leveraging Monte Carlo simulation, that harnesses the individual realizations to capture and model realistic component damage patterns under a specified hazard scenario. This framework addresses a gap in literature by moving beyond traditional methods that often treat component failures as independent events. By capturing the interdependence between bridges, primarily through failure interactions, and system-wide effects, our method provides a more comprehensive criticality assessment. The simulation data provides a foundation for the framework, which applies to a wide variety of infrastructure networks and performance metrics. To demonstrate the method's effectiveness, a simplified transportation network from Shelby County, TN subjected to an earthquake event is analyzed. The proposed framework provides an effective approach for component ranking, suitable for decision-making where human intuition and simple methods are insufficient. Its broad applicability suggests a potential for large-scale and interdependent network problems.