Risk assessment for an Italian road network due to an extreme earthquake hazard scenario and the associated landslide cascading effects

Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, have the potential to cause damage to transport infrastructure networks and can lead to significant network disruption and associated losses. The INFRARISK project (Novel Indicators for... [ view full abstract ]

Natural hazards, such as earthquakes, have the potential to cause damage to transport infrastructure networks and can lead to significant network disruption and associated losses. The INFRARISK project (Novel Indicators for Identifying Critical INFRAstructure at RISK from Natural Hazards) is developing methodologies to assess the impact of extreme natural hazard events on critical transport infrastructure networks. To demonstrate the systematic application of the proposed methodologies, a road network in Northern Italy is being assessed due to an extreme earthquake hazard scenario and the associated landslide cascading effects. The road network is distributed over an area of approximately 990km2 and is located along the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor of the TEN-T network, which is considered a vital axis for the European economy. The vulnerability of the road network is assessed according to the seismic vulnerability of the 340 bridges and 30 tunnels located along the network, as well as the vulnerability of 870 km of roads to earthquake-triggered landslide hazards. This paper presents the initial results of the risk assessment, which evaluates the direct consequences to the road network due to an extreme seismic hazard scenario. The methodology also supports the quantification of indirect consequences for transport networks due to natural hazard scenarios, which is the subject of future work.