Road Vulnerability Assessment in the Case of a Seismic Event

Abstract

Roads often suffer significant damage following an earthquake, which can be attributed to various factors. This study aims to identify and quantify these factors and provide an estimation of the vulnerability index for the studied road section. The vulnerability index enables the classification of a section based on its vulnerability. To achieve this, we propose an estimation method for the seismic vulnerability index of a road, which uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine the weights of the identified parameters. The resulting vulnerability index value facilitates the classification of the road section using the proposed scale. Additionally, we present several case studies that validate the obtained results, aligning with seismic feedback. Moreover, a seismic scenario was simulated on an urban network using a geographic information system (GIS) to predict the seismic behavior of the road network in the target city.