Resilience Index Assessment for Urban Excavations

This paper addresses the risks associated with deep excavations in urban areas, particularly concerning the potential damage or collapse of nearby structures, networks, and roads due to horizontal movements caused by the excavation’s support system. The study focuses on a specific case in Bogotá, Colombia, involving a 10-m deep excavation in soft clay, which experienced basal heave failure and infrastructure deformation during construction. To assess the resilience of the support system, the paper introduces a methodology that employs fuzzy logic to define criteria like robustness, redundancy, rapidity, and resourcefulness. The resilience index is calculated using ordered weighted average (OWA) with the Orness parameter α, allowing for the modeling of different risk attitudes, optimistic or pessimistic. Results indicate that the support system was insufficiently robust to prevent basal heave failure, and the resilience index decreased after the failure event in various scenarios. This study highlights the importance of evaluating resilience as an intrinsic property of systems to enhance their performance and adaptability in urban excavation projects.