Regional earthquake-induced landslide assessments for use in seismic risk analyses of distributed gas infrastructure systems

Creators: Ojomo, Olaide; Rathje, Ellen M.; Wang, Pengfei; Lavrendiatis, Greg; Zimmaro, Paolo; Asimaki, Domniki¹; Stewart, Jonathan P.

1. California Institute of Technology

Abstract

Earthquake-induced landslides are associated with significant risks to human lives and infrastructure. Spatially distributed infrastructure systems, such as pipelines, power lines, and transportation networks, are at particular risk to seismic landslides due to their large spatial extent. To conduct a comprehensive seismic landslide risk assessment for these systems, there is the need to evaluate the seismic landslide characteristics (i.e., location, size, displacement, direction) on a broad, regional scale. This paper presents a framework for seismic landslide analysis that provides this information for subsequent risk assessments. The approach computes seismic landslide displacements using a sliding block approach while accounting for the uncertainties in the input variables and displacement models using a logic tree. The computed displacements are then aggregated based on geomorphic landforms to define landslide zones. For each landslide zone, the statistical distributions of landslide features, such as landslide size, displacement level, and direction of movement, are defined. These attributes are presented in a format that can be integrated with fragility models for distributed infrastructure systems to quantify risk on a regional scale. The application of the approach is demonstrated through assessments for gas pipeline networks across the state of California in the United States.

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Acknowledgement

This work is made possible by a research contract from the California Energy Commission to the Natural Hazard Risk and Resiliency Research Center at the B. John Garrick Risk Institute at UCLA. The digital elevation model and geotechnical borehole database were provided by the California Geological Survey. Discussions with landslide and geology experts Tim McCrink, Randy Jibson, Chris Wills, Alan Kropp, Chris Hitchcock, Chris Madugo, Albert Kottke, Michael Boone, Bob Hollingsworth and Tom Blake were very helpful to provide additional perspective to characterize the shear strengths for geologic units in the study area. The implementation of the framework described here was completed for the entire state of California using resources at DesignSafe and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

Funding

This work is made possible by a research contract from the California Energy Commission to the Natural Hazard Risk and Resiliency Research Center at the B. John Garrick Risk Institute at UCLA.

Data Availability

The Python scripts used for the yield acceleration calculation, sliding displacement calculation, landslide zone segmentation, and attribute determination can be accessed from the DesignSafe online data repository (Ojomo and Rathje, 2023). This published dataset includes the geospatial inputs for the analysis, as well as example output for a small region of the study area.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:

Ellen M. Rathje reports financial support was provided by California Energy Commission. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: Elsevier
Published in: Engineering Geology, 340, 107664, ISSN: 0013-7952.
Languages: English