Table Of ContentINFRASTRUCTURE RISK
MANAGEMENPTR OCESSES
NATURALA, CCIDENTAL,
DELIBERATHEA ZARDS
AND
EDITED BY
Craig Taylor, Ph.D.
Erik VanMarcke, Ph.D.
ASCE Council on Disaster Risk Management
Monograph No. 1
ASCE American Society
of Civil Engineers
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Contents
...................................................................................
Introduction and Executive Summary 1
Hazard Issues
..................
PSHA Uncertainty Analysis: Applications to the CEUS and the Pacific NW 15
Stephen Harmsen
Systems Evaluation Issues
The Regional Economic Cost of a Tsunami Wave Generated by a Submarine
.................................................................................
Landslide off Palos Verdes, California 67
Jose Borrero, Sungbin Cho, James E. Moore 11, and Costas Synolakis
...........
The Emerging Role of Remote Sensing Technology in Emergency Management 95
Beverley J. Adams and Charles K. Huyck
...............
Context and Resiliency: Influences on Electric Utility Lifeline Performance. 118
Dorothy Reed, Jane Preuss, and Jaewook Park
Risk Criteria Issues
...............................................................
Criteria for Acceptable Risk in the Netherlands 145
J. K. Vrijling, P. H. A. J. M. van Gelder, and S. J. Ouwerkerk
Systems Management Issues
...................................................................
Landslide Risk Assessment and Remediation 161
Mihail Popescu and Manoochehr Zoghi
A Preliminary Study of Geologic Hazards for the Columbia River Transportation
Corridor. ...............................................................................................................................194
Yumei Wang and Amar Chaker
..............
Multihazard Mitigation Los Angeles Water System: A Historical Perspective 224
Le Val Lund and Craig Davis
Appendices
...............................................
Appendix A: Short Biographies of Contributing Authors 283
Appendix B: Rosters of the Two Participating Committees and Reviewers
............................................................................................................
of Submitted Papers 290
.....................................................................................................................................
Index 293
V
INTRODUCTION AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This introduction and executive summary cover
The origins of this monograph as a sequel to a previous monograph generated by
0
the joint efforts of the members of two committees of the American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE) and other volunteers (section 1. O),
A broad overview of infrastructure risk management procedures and processes,
along with a clarification as to why processes and procedures are emphasized in
this document (section 2.0),
Brief synopses of the papers included in this monograph (section 3.0), and
0
A list of significant related publications (section 4.0)
0
1. O The Monograph as a Sequel
For six years, two committees of ASCE have jointly worked on two monographs whose
papers have undergone rigorous peer review. The committees involved are the Seismic
Risk Committee of the Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (TCLEE)
and the Risk and Vulnerability Committee of the Council on Disaster Risk Management
(CDRM). Through these efforts, along with those of other volunteer contributors, the
committees produced in March 2002 a monograph entitled Acceptable Risk Processes:
Lifelines and Natural Hazards (edited by Craig Taylor and Erik VanMarcke).
This previous monograph contained mainly technical papers that evaluated procedures
used in these “acceptable risk processes”. Considering all the advances in probabilistic
seismic hazard analysis over more than three decades, David Perkins elaborated a number
of remaining issues having the effect that uncertainties may be significantly higher than
the well-developed models indicate. Armen Der Kiureghian presented a paper explaining
how to apply Bayesian methods to obtain seismic fragility models for electric power
components. Stuart Werner and Craig Taylor presented issues arising when constructing
seismic vulnerability models for transportation system components. Adam Rose deals
with the complex issue of validating models to estimate higher-order economic losses.
A persistent problem is how to develop prescriptive criteria that provide guidance and
goals for acceptable risk procedures. In the previous monograph, Keith Porter reviewed
and evaluated life-safety criteria that are available, and Daniel Alesch, Robert Nagy, and
Craig Taylor addressed available financial criteria.
Inasmuch as technical procedures do not comprise the full scope of acceptable risk
processes, three additional papers covered communication, administration and regulation
1
2 INFRASTRUCTURE RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
issues. From an owner’s and then an engineer’s perspective, Dick Wittkop and Bo
Jensen addressed challenges in communicating risk results. Frank Lobedan, Thomas
LaBasco, and Kenny Ogunfunmi discussed the administration of the major wharf
embankment and strengthening program at the Port of Oakland. And Martin Eskijian,
Ronald Heffkon, and Thomas Dahlgren discussed the regulatory process for designing
and implementing the engineering standards for marine oil terminals in the State of
California.
On February 9,2002, the two AXE committees, along with other guests, met in Long
Beach, California to discuss the status of the monograph project. Considering many
previously proposed papers that had not been completed for the monograph about to be
published and mindll that the events of September 11 ,2001 had created wide interest in
infrastructure risks, the joint committees decided to produce a sequel monograph. In
addition, before the meeting, Jim Beavers, then Chair of TCLEE, had suggested that the
topic of acceptable risk be a workshop topic for August 10,2003, as part of the 6* U. S.
Lifeline Earthquake Engineering Workshop and Conference (TCLEE2003).
At this workshop, held in Los Angeles on August 10,2003, all presenters either had
contributed to the first monograph or were developing papers for this second. With Erik
VanMarcke and Craig Taylor as moderators, the following presentations were given:
Richard Wittkop, on risk communication
David Perkins, on earthquake hazard mapping procedures and their uncertainties
Beverley Adams, on emerging post-disaster reconnaissance technologies
Keith Porter, on criteria for assessing life-safety risks
Stuart Werner, on vulnerability modeling for critical components
James Moore 11, on transportation-system risks from tsunamis
Le Val Lund, on risk-reduction efforts at the Los Angeles Department of Water
and Power (LADW) water system, and
Jane Preuss, on land use planning and electric power distribution risks from
natural hazards
In addition, contributors to the first monograph and authors of the present monograph
were asked to make presentations for two sessions, held on October 2 1,2004, at the
Baltimore ASCE Civil Engineering Conference & Exposition. These sessions covered
risk management and acceptable risk for natural, accidental, and malicious threats.
Moderated by Erik VanMarcke and Craig Taylor, these sessions featured presentations
by:
Jose Borrero, on costs of a tsunamis generated by a submarine landslide off Palos
Verdes, California
Yumei Wang and Amar Chaker, on geologic hazards affecting the Columbia
River Transportation Corridor
INFRASTRUCTURE RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESSES 3
Mihail Popescu, on landslide risk assessment and treatment
0
LeVal Lund, on the history of multi-hazard mitigation of the LADWP water
0
system
Adam Rose, on regional economic impacts of the 2001 electric power blackouts
in Los Angeles, and
Ruben Jongejan, on criteria for risk mitigation in the Netherlands.
2.0 Infrastructure Risk Management Procedures and Processes
Figure 1 provides a simplified outline of acceptable risk procedures for threats to
infrastructure systems. According to this outline, an initial inquiry is raised pertaining to
the system. This inquiry may arise from within the organization running the system or
from the outside-such as by the press, professionals, regulators, or the general public.
Technical procedures consist in defining the system of interest to respond to the inquiry,
identifying significant hazards, assessing the vulnerability of system components to these
hazards, and assessing system performance under conditions of hazard-induced damage.
Formal technical procedures have been shown to be critical in decision-making for many
large infrastructure systems and/or key components of these systems (see Taylor et al.,
1998). These often permit the evaluation of a range of risk-reduction alternatives and
lead to affordable yet effective solutions to infrastructure system weaknesses. As a
result, special emphasis has been placed on technical issues in both monographs.
At the same time, infrastructure risk management does not consist merely of making
technical evaluations, as complex as these may be. In the first place, as researchers
recognize (and may or may not explicitly state), in risk modeling there are always
caveats, assumptions, and other contextual issues confining or conditioning the results
provided. It is difficult to quantify, for instance, all “costs” of disasters. (See the H. John
Heinz 111 Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment, 2000) It is likewise
extremely challenging if not impossible to account for all uncertainties within complex
evaluations.
In the second place, there are many occasions in which formal technical evaluations are
either cost-prohibitive or else unnecessary. For instance, in local flood protection
programs, experience with solutions to reduce flood risks to transportation systems has in
some cases led to affordable solutions that do not require extensive detailed evaluations
(written communications, Rebecca Quinn and Elliott Mittler, 9/04).
In the third place, the many dimensions of infrastructure risk-informed decision-making
include political, social, ethical, administrative, environmental, security, and a host of
other considerations that are typically not incorporated into formal technical evaluations.
In a series of Earthquake Engineering Research Institute lectures, W. Petak (ATC-58
presentation, 2/24/03) has maintained that seismic risk results and their uses are
4 INFRASTRUCTURE RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
Identify Significant 4
Hazards
Assess Vulnerability of System
cmponentstotiatards 4
AbsesssystemPerfoImance
Under Conditions of Hazard
YES YES
&=LT
Accept Performance Level
Figure 1. Decision Process for Ensuring that System Performance Goals are
Met (LA, 2004)
INFRASTRUCTURE RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESSES 5
dependent on a variety of contexts. One cannot comprehensively explicate all contextual
factors bearing on infrastructure risk management decisions. These multiple dimensions
are pertinent to resolving, in Figure 1, the performance or assessment metrics to be used
and the corresponding target or threshold performance levels.
In the fourth place, because there may be so many stakeholders in infrastructure risk
management projects and programs, their evaluation cannot always be assumed to
achieve some pre-determined level of optimality, decided solely by technical
requirements. As shown in some of the papers in this monograph, the previous
monograph and many case studies of infrastructure risk management programs, these
programs do not usually go as planned. New information, concessions to various
stakeholders, citizen rejection of proposed bonds for public works, changing directions as
a result of emerging priorities such as those arising from new regulations, loss of
institutional memory, changing organizational cultures, and many other factors make
infrastructure risk management programs-even successful ones-dynamic. (See, for
instance, James March, 1988)
3.0 Synopses of Papers in this Monograph
The first monograph covered many broad topics pertaining to acceptable risk processes
for lifelines and natural hazards. However, in the early stages of development of this
sequel monograph, it became clear that many important topics were in fact not treated.
The first monograph’s coverage focused on earthquake risks, a field that has shown
quantitative sophistication for almost forty years. In spite of remaining uncertainties in
estimating earthquake risks, especially to (spatially distributed) infiastructure systems,
the degree of quantitative sophistication for these risks is not matched by a number of
other natural hazards risks. (See American Lifelines Alliance, 2002, section 3.0). Also,
accidental and malicious threats were at best an afierthought (to members of the joint
ASCE committees) until September 200 1.
In the previous monograph, the broad topics addressed were “Technical Issues,” “Risk
Criteria Issues,” and “Communication, Administration and Regulation Issues.” In this
monograph, the broad topics covered are “Hazard Issues,” “Systems Evaluation Issues,”
“Risk Criteria Issues,” and “Systems Management Issues.”
Hazard Issues.
Under the broad topic “Hazard Issues,” only one paper is included. In the paper “PSHA
Uncertainty Analysis: Applications to the CEUS and the PaciJicW ’’ Steven Harmsen
extends a topic discussed by David Perkins in the previous monograph and in the 2003
Workshop: the magnitudes of the uncertainties in probabilistic seismic hazard analyses
(PHSA’s). PHSA-based estimates are used in major seismic codes and have a significant
bearing on many professional, governmental, engineering, and financial activities. Most
6 INFRASTRUCTURE RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
importantly, PHSA-based estimates are used in risk studies, but often without sufficient
regard to (or accounting for) the uncertainty in these estimates.
This paper illustrates the quantitative sophistication in developing inputs for estimates of
earthquake hazard and risk and resulting uncertainties, and presages further quantitative
developments in seismic risk evaluations of infi.astructure systems. Over time, the
number of parties developing, reviewing, or using PHSA’s and their input models has
grown considerably. The USGS has produced PHSA’s for over thirty years. This
continuous activity has produced considerable valuable verification and validation efforts
but no monopoly. Competing input models exist that express diverse opinions and results
on earthquake sources, both fault-specific and random, and on how strong ground
motions attenuate through rock to various sites.
For purposes of evaluating and expressing uncertainties resulting from diverse input
source and attenuation models and assumptions, Harmsen, following USGS (Frankel et
al., 2002), has developed a logic-tree formulation that represents the broadest features of
the input alternatives at every phase. Instead of accumulating exceedance probabilities at
a fixed ground motion level, however, he computes ground motions at a fixed exceedance
probability level. Harmsen uses the input models and weights as found in the USGS
2002 national hazard mapping work. To supplement this USGS 2002 input information,
he adds a preliminary representation of uncertainties in rates of occurrence from known
faulting systems and an estimated range of uncertainty for areal source rate and b-values.
Results of these logic-tree models are expressed, for instance, in terms of probability
density functions of strong ground motion values for a specific return period. These
probability density hctions clearly display symmetries and asymmetries, single and
multiple modes, and sometimes very large ranges of uncertainty. In the main, greater
uncertainties exist for sites in the Central and Eastern United States (CEUS) than in the
Pacific Northwest. Alternative assumptions on major faulting sources and on attenuation
models are major contributors to uncertainties. These findings can thus be used not only
to guide future research but also to express more fully the range of uncertainties in
earthquake hazard and risk evaluation as a result of its quantitative sophistication.
Systems Evaluation Issues.
In the paper “The Regional Economic Cost of a Tsunami Wave Generated by a
Submarine Landslide oflPalos Verdes, California, Jose Borrero, Sungbin Cho, James
”
E. Moore I! and Costas Synoloakis discuss two topics not covered in the previous
monograph: tsunamis and transportation systems analysis. According to the authors, this
is the first attempt to model the prospective costs resulting from tsunamis.
The paper covers a multi-disciplinary project employing expertise in tsunamis generation
and run-up analysis, transportation system analysis, and higher-order economic analysis.
INFRASTRUCTURE RISK MANAGEMENT PROCESSES 7
The complex model consists of four main elements: a detailed assessment of the hazards
caused by a submarine landslide that induces a tsunami; an account of the vulnerability of
structures, especially transportation structures, in response to these hazards; a
transportation network model that estimates travel-time losses and incorporates
developing new ideas on how post-disaster traffic demands may be reduced by increased
congestion and delays; and a regional input-output model used iteratively in conjunction
with the transportation model in order to assess indirect and induced losses. Loss
estimates for this hypothetical scenario range from $7B to $40B,w ith a range largely
dependent on the how well two major ports respond to the tsunami. Estimating
probabilities of this or other tsunamis still poses, however, major research challenges.
The previous monograph primarily focused on the prevention of infrastructure risks fiom
natural hazards. Even with sound preventive measures, though, there remain residual
risks, sometimes extremely large and grave. In the paper “The Emerging Role of Remote
Sensing Technology in Emergency Management, Beverley J. Adams and Charles K.
”
Huyck cover how remote sensing can assist not only in pre-disaster planning but in post-
disaster planning as well. This emerging technology has potential applications not only
for assessing landslide, earthquake, hurricane, volcano, wildfire, and other natural hazard
risks, but also in coping with such anthropogenic risks as illustrated by the Columbia
Space Shuttle explosion, the World Trade Center attacks, oil spills, and the movement of
pollution and particulate debris.
Adams and Huyck first indicate that pre-disaster remote-sensing data are required in
order to have baseline data both for loss estimation methods and for post-disaster
applications. For use in response and recovery efforts, remote-sensing technology has the
potential to assist in prioritizing and optimizing efforts, as well as in providing initial
idormation that bears on the need for aid from outside the affected region. Future
directions of this emerging technology include improving delivery time, training of
responders and installation of this technology into emergency response networks, and
more frequent baseline coverage for many regions.
Natural hazards evaluations of electric power system performance have often focused on
the vulnerability of the transmission system. In the United States, this system is roughly
divided into three major regions in which a single incident at one point in the system can
cause outages elsewhere. Additionally, the impacts of California earthquakes on bulk
substations has stood out. The focus thus has been on earthquake engineering rather than
land-use management. (See MA, 2004; Taylor et al., 1998)
In the paper “Contexta nd Resiliency: Influences on Electric Utiliw Lifeline
Performance, Doruthy Reed Jane Prezass, and Jaewouk Park focus instead on the
”
electric power distribution system impacts of four major Pacific Northwest storms surd
also the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. This focus provides initial data for estimating outage
times and also for assessing local vegetation management policies and practices.
