Downtime estimation and analysis of lifelines after an earthquake

This paper provides an empirical probabilistic model for estimating the downtime of lifelines following earthquakes. Generally, the downtime of infrastructure varies according to several factors, including the characteristics of the exposed structure, the earthquake intensity, and the amount of available human resources. Having so many variables makes the process of estimating the downtime even harder. Therefore, it is necessary to have a simple and practical model to estimate the downtime of infrastructure systems. To do so, a large database has been collected from literature, which includes damage data for many earthquakes that took place in the last century. The database has been used to create restoration curves for four types of lifelines: Water distribution network, Gas network, Power system, and Telecommunication network. Different restoration curves have been developed based on several criteria, such as the earthquake magnitude, development level of the affected country, and countries with enough data. The restoration curves have been presented in terms of probability of recovery and time; the longer is the time after the disaster, the higher is the probability of the infrastructure to recover its functions.