Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

The safety and economic security of Canadians increasingly depends on the integrity of infrastructure such as bridges, roadways, buildings and port facilities. Besides direct damage and losses and threats to human lives, disasters such as a bridge collapse can have negative socio-economic impacts to the urban area and beyond. For example, transport delays can lead to productivity and job losses. This research project will develop methods and tools to help decision makers evaluate, expose, compare and manage risks to infrastructure that is subjected to multiple hazards. Hazards are uncertain and difficult to quantify. Current risk assessment methods tend to lack transparency and they miss the big picture by centering around individual risk components. They also focus on rare, extreme hazards, such as earthquakes, in isolation, and lack tools to consider such hazards in combination with more routine hazards such as deterioration. This research will take a novel, holistic approach that will take into account oft-overlooked socio-economic consequences of failure events and mitigation actions. The research will also closely examine an increasingly common hazard that is rarely recognized - the aging of infrastructure - and how this hazard affects the response of infrastructure during severe hazards such as earthquakes. The research will produce tools to help decision makers in making optimal choices regarding infrastructure safety. It will provide the information necessary to evaluate the safety of older infrastructure and make proper maintenance/retrofit decisions, while safely prolonging the infrastructure's service life.  The methodology will be evaluated through testbeds conducted in collaboration with supporting organizations.  The testbeds will include the assessment of consequences resulting from structural failures at the Port of Vancouver and comparison of risk mitigation techniques to alleviate the consequences.