The design and the manufacture of the oil and gas pipelines are being improved over the years in response to the observed damages and related disastrous effects. The improvements are possible, thanks to the increasing knowledge about pipeline performances in specific contexts. The seismic hazard on buried pipelines has always been of major concern, and the earthquake-induced soil liquefaction effects are among the most important issues to be accounted for in the design. Experiences based on case histories, experimental modelling, and numerical simulations represent the source of understanding of the involved mechanisms, the affecting parameters, and the structure response. Recently, all these aspects are becoming more accurate, thanks to the use of monitoring systems. The protection of pipelines from the seismic hazard is a crucial and challenging issue. This paper provides an overview of the research that has been conducted over the years in the specific framework of soil liquefaction phenomenon. Case histories on pipeline performances, commonly adopted analytical methods, and results of model tests and numerical simulations are summarized with main focus on the level of knowledge achieved up to date and the existing limitations that represent open issues for further development of the research. This study represents a useful background to be adopted from academics and practitioners in order to enhance the methods of analyses of the pipelines, thus improving their performances in the applications of the oil and gas industry.

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<p>The identification of areas susceptible to different co-seismic instabilities is an important issue of the seismic zonation at urban scale finalized to the territory planning and its protection. Among the co-seismic permanent deformations caused by seismic shaking, the fractures, the landslides, the settlements due to liquefaction or compression/densification can be recognized.</p><p>The seismic compression or densification is a phenomenon producing permanent ground settlements in dry cohesionless soils (clean sands and sands with fine content) inducing damages to structures, infrastructures and lifelines, accordingly with well documented post-earthquake damages of past events.</p><p> The susceptibility to this co-seismic instability in presence of dry clean sand, silty sand and sandy silty has been evaluated in the present work through the evaluation of the expected permanent ground settlements by means of non-simplified uncoupled methods computing volumetric strains from cyclic shear strains evaluated by means of site response analyses. This procedure was integrated into a parametric study of 1D seismic site response analyses varying relative density (or shear wave velocity) and thickness of compressible layers, intensity of input ground motion, depth of the seismic bedrock. The results have been then processed to define simplified charts differentiated for three different levels of input peak ground acceleration values and for the three considered lithologies (clean sands, silty sands and sandy silts).</p><p>These latter are mainly finalized to be used at urban scale, in the perspective of Seismic Microzonation (SM) studies requiring input-data commonly available in level 2 and 3 studies that have a strategic application in land use planning in the perspective of the territory protection.</p><p>A specific methodology was proposed by means of guideline based on a procedure with increasing complexity: 1) preliminary screening; 2) level 1 analyses; 3) level 3 analyses. The areas potentially susceptible to seismic compression identified in this preliminary phase are to be studied in the level 1 of SM, that identifies attention zones by checking the presence of predisposing conditions to the phenomenon. In the level 3 of SM, the susceptible zones and respect zones are identified through the estimation of the settlements by means of the charts proposed in the present work and the seismic site response analysis, respectively.</p>

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