The California Energy Commission has published “Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering Assessment Tool for Natural Gas Storage and Pipeline Systems, Task4F - System Wide Natural Gas Infrastructure Response and Fragility Model Report.” It was written by Jennie Watson-Lamprey, Micaela Largent, and Barry Zheng - Slate Geotechnical Consultants.
The publication is an interim project report for the OpenSRA project. OpenSRA is a new open-source seismic risk assessment software tool for gas utility regulators and owners that will enable them to strategically assess challenges posed by the risk from earthquakes. This report focuses on the fragility of natural gas infrastructure. Three systems are considered (buried pipeline, underground storage facilities, and surficial storage and distribution systems). Each has undergone finite element modeling to estimate the response of the system and the probability of failure. The results of the finite element modeling are used to develop fragility curves that are implemented into OpenSRA to aid end users in estimating failures in their systems as well as planning mitigation efforts.