A practical framework to assess the sustainability and resiliency of civil infrastructure

Abstract

Research within civil engineering is focusing on newer ideas and philosophies such as sustainability and resiliency (S&R). This is evident in the development of frameworks to assess sustainability or the resiliency of civil infrastructure. Several frameworks were developed by researchers to quantify sustainability and resiliency of civil infrastructure. It is evident that the sustainability and resiliency are not mutually exclusive and is important to asses these aspects at the same time and frameworks be able to accommodate simultaneous assessments. While there are other frameworks that follow a unified approach to S&R assessments, they do not account for the risk of the hazard as a part of the framework. In the proposed framework, an attempt was made to include the risk of the hazard as a part of the assessment to gain a realistic perspective of the hazard impact. This paper presents explicit steps to use the framework, along with an example of using the frame work in assessing an earthen dam subjected to two types of hazards, earthquakes and floods. Novel aspects of this framework revolve around the simplicity, and flexibility of the framework. Major input parameters are user-defined, which allows for a wide range of variable to be considered when determining the overall quality of the infrastructure.