Seismic Resilience of Water Distribution and Cellular Communication Systems after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake

Abstract

The seismic resilience of civil infrastructure systems has a direct effect on the resilience of communities. These systems provide communities with essential services, including potable water and electric power. It is, however, not only important to account for their robustness: the evolution of the demand for their services needs to also be included in a holistic resilience assessment. Using the resilience-compositional demand/supply (Re-CoDeS) framework, the seismic resilience of two civil infrastructure systems, namely, the water distribution system and the cellular communication system of the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, is assessed in the aftermath of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake. Both systems show a lack of resilience after the earthquake. It is demonstrated that the evolution of the community demand has a large effect on the resilience of civil infrastructure systems. In fact, while the demand of the community for water decreased after the earthquake, a large increase in demand was observed for the cellular communication system, leading to a high lack of resilience. The presented findings may be used to design more resilient systems and to optimize recovery.