Scenario-based resilience assessment framework for critical infrastructure systems: Case study for seismic resilience of seaports

• A scenario-based framework for seismic resilience assessment of systems is presented.
• Seismic resilience of a hypothetical seaport with realistic settings is studied.
• Berth availability is found to govern seaport functionality following earthquakes.

A number of metrics in the past have been proposed and numerically implemented to assess the overall performance of large systems during natural disasters and their recovery in the aftermath of the events. Among such performance measures, resilience is a reliable metric. This paper proposes a probabilistic framework for scenario-based resilience assessment of infrastructure systems. The method accounts for uncertainties in the process including the correlation of the earthquake intensity measures, fragility assessment of structural components, estimation of repair requirements, the repair process, and finally the service demands. The proposed method is applied to a hypothetical seaport terminal and the system level performance of the seaport is assessed using various performance metrics. Results of this analysis have shown that medium to large seismic events may significantly disrupt the operation of seaports right after the event and the recovery process may take months. The proposed framework will enable port stakeholders to systematically assess the most-likely performance of the system during expected future earthquake events.