Empirical Fragility Assessment of Three-Waters and Railway Infrastructure Damaged by the 2015 Illapel Tsunami, Chile

Abstract

Despite the importance of critical infrastructure for the effective functioning of communities, their vulnerability to tsunamis remains unstudied. This study addresses this issue by developing empirical fragility curves for infrastructure components currently absent from tsunami vulnerability research. This research applies post-event damage data from the 2015 Illapel tsunami in a cumulative link model (CLM) to form fragility curves for three-waters (manholes, culverts, and drain inlets) and railway infrastructure components. The synthesized fragility curves reveal that in response to the flow depth, culverts exhibit the highest vulnerability of all the infrastructures studied. The curves also suggest that culverts, drain inlets, and railways have higher vulnerability when compared to infrastructure such as roads or utility poles.

Keywords

• tsunami
• critical infrastructure
• 2015 Illapel tsunami
• Chile
• vulnerability
• fragility curve