Retrofit Priority of Transport Network Links under an Earthquake

Abstract

This paper analyzes the economic impact of an earthquake on transportation network that contains more detail for the Midwest states. Two aspects of cost are considered in the paper: final demand loss and transport cost increase. The 1812 New Madrid earthquake is used to develop a scenario for the analysis. The modeling system includes a transportation network loss function, a final demand loss function, and an integrated commodity flow model. After running the earthquake scenario, the analysis identifies the most significant link on the network in an economic sense as well as the link with the greatest physical disruption. The results reveal that the links with greater physical disruption are not always the ones exhibiting the greater economic damage. The resulting outputs can provide information to perform a cost-benefit analysis as well as to support a decision-making process on the optimal retrofit priority of bridges and links on the transportation network.