Browsing by Author "Castro, S."

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Construction and risk evaluation of a water distribution network under seismic hazard in central Chile
    (2021) Llera Martin, Juan Carlos de la; Castro, S.; Arróspide, F.; Poulos, A.; Alberto, Yolanda
    Water distribution is of critical importance under regular conditions, and more so in times of an emergency induced by a large natural event, which also stresses the performance of other lifelines and critical infrastructure. Being able to compare the network operation in normal conditions with, that during an extreme event, is useful for decision makers in defining investment priorities for mitigation plans. This work aims to perform risk analysis under seismic hazard on the water network of a large conurbation in central Chile formed by the cities of Valparaíso and Viña del Mar. A hydraulic network model of the water network was developed first considering the physical properties of network elements and their estimated head losses. Herein, the methodology for the network construction is described, which combines datasets available in official repositories. As a first attempt, damage scenarios are generated using peak ground acceleration maps constructed using a ground motion prediction model. Pipeline failure is evaluated using fragility functions available in the literature; hydraulic analyses are then carried out on the damaged network. The performance of the network is measured in terms of connectivity (loss) and percentage of unsupplied demand. Finally, a seismic risk analysis on these two indices is presented to enable identification of the relevant characteristics of the constructed network.
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    Earthquake response sensitivity of complex infrastructure networks
    (2020) Llera Martin, Juan Carlos de la; Monsalve, Mauricio; Ferrario, Elisa; Allen, E.; Chamorro, A.; Castro, S.; Alberto, Yolanda; Arróspide, Felipe; Poulos, Alan; Candia, G.; Aguirre, P.
    Resilience of complex infrastructure networks is critical in achieving earthquake resilience in urban environments. Perhaps due to their modeling complexity, very few research studies have addressed sensitivity of the network response to a severe earthquake hazard field. This research aims to characterize earthquake response sensitivity as a function of different topological parameters of 5 critical complex networks in central Chile, covering the electric, transportation, and drinking water networks. Central Chile was selected because it amounts for almost 50% of the country’s population. What is also particular about this setting, is that the seismic characteristics of the region lead to extended (essentially) N-S strike fault ruptures, which run along the subduction margin defined by the E-W convergence between the South American and Pacific Ocean plates at an unusual rate of about 68 mm/year, thus involving in the strong-motion hazard field geographic scales in the hundreds of kilometers. It is concluded that node and link topological structures differ considerably between these complex systems, which are characterized by several different well-known centrality parameters and other interesting indices and network-class discriminators. Secondly, a component criticality analysis under an earthquake hazard field is also presented just in terms of connectivity/service loss, which enables, at least, a rough identification of the robustness of each network as nodes and links are removed. Results from these topological analyses are useful to identify which components are essential in generating larger earthquake resilience. This is the first time such results are obtained for central Chile using very detailed models of these complex networks
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    Impact of earthquake magnitude on the estimation of tsunami evacuation casualties
    (2018) Castro, S.; Poulos, A.; Urrutia, A.; Herrera, J. C.; Cienfuegos, R.; Llera Martin, Juan Carlos de la
    The importance of evacuation plans has been widely proven in recent tsunami events. Several evacuation models have been proposed to develop these plans and estimate city evacuation times. Typically, single extreme earthquake scenarios are used in these estimations; however, the impact of earthquake damage on the evacuation routes is usually neglected in these models. This article deals with the evaluation of the effect of three different earthquake magnitudes and the following tsunamis. Several spectral accelerations were sampled for each magnitude to estimate city damage, and from there the reduced capacity of evacuation routes due to earthquake debris. An agent-based evacuation model was used to assess the evacuation times for the city of Iquique, located in north Chile. Results show significant variability for different magnitude scenarios, thus leading to an observed increment on evacuation times up to 40% and an increase in the number of casualties due to the evacuation delay caused by earthquake debris spread on the evacuation routes
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    Predictive capacity of topological measures in evaluating seismic risk and resilience of electric power networks
    (ELSEVIER SCI LTD, 2022) Ferrario, Elisa; Poulos, A.; Castro, S.; Llera Martin, Juan Carlos de la; Lorca Gálvez, Álvaro Hugo
    Electric Power Networks (EPNs) play a fundamental role in the wellbeing of modern societies and recovery of societal functions after an earthquake. Risk and resilience analyses may identify useful network characteristics to improve EPN response and recovery during and after a severe seismic event. This work computes different functional measures in order to: (i) estimate the actual risk and resilience of EPNs; and (ii) evaluate the predictive capacity of different topological measures (TMs) relative to the EPN earthquake risk performance. The analysis is carried out on the Chilean EPN at the national, regional and substation level, by using a detailed model of the network. EPN operation was modeled using the DC optimal power flow model from the time of earthquake occurrence until full system recovery using the Seismic Probabilistic Risk Assessment framework. Seismic risk and resilience estimations of Energy Not Supplied (ENS) and number of hours with ENS have been correlated with six network TMs. Linear correlation results show that TMs provide, in general, limited insight into the criticality of the Chilean EPN. In spite of that, the strongest correlation was observed for the degree TM. Moreover, the Damage Consequence Index confirmed the rather uniformly distributed seismic risk along the country.
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    Verification of cardiac mechanics software: benchmark problems and solutions for testing active and passive material behaviour
    (2015) Land, S.; Gurev, V.; Arens, S.; Augustín, C.; Baron, L.; Blake, R.; Bradley, C.; Crozier, A.; Favino, Marco; Hurtado Sepúlveda, Daniel; Fastl, T.; Fritz, T.; Gao, H.; Gizzi, A.; Griffith, B.; Krause, R.; Castro, S.