Prioritization in Upgrading Seismic Performance of Road Network Based on System Reliability Analysis

Abstract

Prioritized allocation of limited resources is essential consideration in seismic improvement of existing transportation facilities. In this study, the concept of performancebased prioritization in upgrading seismic reliability of road networks is proposed. Firstly, the performance measure is defined as the system flow capacity of road networks subject to failure. Second, a new variance reduction technique for Monte Carlo simulation method is presented to perform efficient reliability analysis in terms of the system flow capacity. The performance-based prioritization order is then determined by using the ranking of Birnbaum's probabilistic importance measure defined as partial derivative of system reliability by component reliability. Illustrative examples are presented to demonstrate prioritization strategy according to various levels of vulnerability and system requirement.