Seminar Tuesday 2/17: CEE 249

CEE 249 Structural Engineering Seminar

UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department

RESILIENCE AND INTERDEPENDENCIES OF CIVIL INFRASTRUCTURES DURING EMERGENCIES

Dr. Gian Paolo Cimellaro

Associate Professor in Structural Engineering

Department of Structural, Geotechnical & Building Engineering (DISEG), Politecnico di Torino

The fundamental concepts of “community resilience” are analyzed and a common reference framework is established.  Several applications of the framework are presented for strategic facilities (e.g. hospitals and schools) and infrastructure networks (e.g. gas, water, power etc.) that are the basis of life and economy of every community.

The hospital and the school are assumed located in California and retrofitted with two different strategies. First, the traditional performance-based earthquake evaluation tools are used to estimate the repair costs and the downtimes which are used as input of the proposed methodology to evaluate the resilience index.  However, during an emergency, the Hospital Emergency Department not only should be safe and damage resistant, but it should also be functional. Therefore, an organizational model of the ED is presented using a discrete event simulation model while taking into account also the emergency plan.  An application of the organizational model to the hospital network of San Francisco hospitals is presented. 

At the regional level, a method to take into account interdependencies for the evaluation of resilience is also presented and applied to the prefectures which were affected by March 11th 2011 Tohoku Earthquake in Japan.  A logical methodology to take in account the cascading effects during an emergency and the propagation of the probability of failure within a network is also presented. 

Finally, the use of new information technologies to improve resilience and disaster management is also investigated showing a new multiplatform application for smartphones which can be used for field reconnaissance.  The proposed app can also be used in a simplified version by normal citizens to give an initial and quick damage evaluation of the area, which is going to be very useful when resources (e.g. the number of specialists is limited). The application has been tested for the first time during 2012 Emilia earthquake in order to enhance the emergency response, showing the efficiency of the proposed method. 

Where:          Royce Hall 190

When:            4 - 5 PM, Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Dr. Cimellaro is the Chair of the ASCE Disaster Resilience of Structures, Infrastructures and Communities SubCommittee and Assistant Professor in the Politecnico di Torino.  He is currently visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering, University at Buffalo (SUNY), NY, USA in 2008, M.S. Earthquake Engineering, University at Buffalo (SUNY), NY 2005; B.s. Civil Engineering, University of Rome "La Sapienza" 2001.  He has received the Fib Achievement Award for Young Engineers 2011 to recognize outstanding contribution to structural concrete, sponsored by fib. Dr. Cimellaro primary field of investigation is Earthquake Engineering with emphasis on defining Quantification of Resilience of physical infrastructural systems.  Gian Paolo Cimellaro has recently been awarded a grant of 1.3 M € by the European Research Council for the research project "IDEAL RESCUE: Integrated Design and control of sustainable communities During emergencies" ERC-2014-StG (2015-2019).  He is currently P.I. of the Project IRUSAT- Improving Resilience of Urban Societies through Advanced Technologies which is mainly developed at the University of California, Berkeley.  He has authored 36 journal papers and 90 international conference proceedings, and 11 book chapters and 1 edited book.  For details please refer to URL: http://www.cimellaro.org