Seismic Resilience of Water Distribution and Cellular Communication Systems after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 144, Issue 6
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.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding for this project provided by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) and Cooperation & Development Center (CODEV) FLASH Research Programme, the assistance received from the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL), National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET), and the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-Nepal (ISET-Nepal), and the additional resources provided by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. The findings and opinions stated in this paper are those of the authors: they are not necessarily condoned or shared by the funding agency, the academic institutions, or the collaborating agencies and individuals in Nepal.
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Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 144 • Issue 6 • June 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 28, 2017
Accepted: Oct 17, 2017
Published online: Mar 20, 2018
Published in print: Jun 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Aug 20, 2018
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