The impact of a PEER funded research project "Performance-Based Economic Loss Assessment Due to a Hypothetical Large Southern California Earthquake Based on the Disruption and Recovery of Port of Los Angeles Freight Traffic" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Ertugrul Taciroglu, Professor of Civil Engineering, UC Los Angeles. The Co-Principal Investigator is Kenichi Soga, Professor of Civil Engineering, UC Berkeley. The Research Team includes Barbaros Cetiner, Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Los Angeles; Bingyu Zhao, Postdoctoral Researcher, UC Berkeley; Michael Virtucio, Graduate Student Researcher, UC Berkeley; and Renjie Wu, Graduate Student Researcher, UC Berkeley.
Download the Research Project Highlight which includes the abstract(PDF)
Abstract
This project develops a novel approach that couples an image-based structure-and-site-specific bridge fragility generation methodology with regional-scale travel demand and economic loss prediction models. The established framework is being applied to real-life bridge networks of crucial importance, including the highway network surrounding the Port of Los Angeles, to assess resilience and economic losses at a high resolution. Due to its data-intensive nature, the proposed approach will capture and incorporate many details that are usually omitted in traditional analyses (e.g., HAZUS). It, therefore, promises to yield significantly improved accuracy in estimating economic losses and recovery after a major scenario event and the discovery of finer metrics of seismic resilience for transportation networks.
