NCEER-95-0007 | 4/24/1995 | 178 pages
TOC: The table of contents is provided.
Keywords: Highway Bridges, Retrofitting, Expert Systems, Prioritization Methods, Seismic Vulnerability Assessment, Seismic Risk Assessment, Importance Assessment, Fragility Curves, Bridge Classes, and Earthquake Engineering.
Abstract: This report presents a prioritization method developed for seismic retrofitting of bridges. The method is used to identify bridges that are in most need of retrofitting and to rank order these bridges based on vulnerability and importance criteria. Vulnerability assessment includes evaluation of the seismic hazard at the bridge site, classification of existing bridges into bridge classes and fragility analysis. Importance assessment considers the attributes that relate the consequences of failure of a bridge to the public safety and socio-economic well-being of a community. The importance of a bridge is considered to be closely related to its function within the transportation network system. A detailed review and critique of the existing prioritization methodologies is included. The developed methodology is illustrated by an example application conducted for the Palo Alto, California area.