A new approach for estimating seismic damage of buried water supply pipelines

Conventional damage prediction methods for lifeline structures are primarily based on peak ground motion measurements. However, line structures such as lifelines suffer damage that is mainly induced by the strain of the ground and therefore are likely to be vulnerable to sharp spatial changes in the ground motion. In this study, we propose a measure for evaluating the damage incurred by underground water supply pipelines based on the spatial gradient of the peak ground velocity (PGV), in an attempt to quantify the effects of the geospatial variabilities in the ground motion on pipeline damage. We investigated the spatial distribution of the damage caused to water pipelines during the Niigata‐ken Chuetsu earthquake on October 10, 2004 (Japan Meteorological Agency magnitude (M_JMA) of 6.8) and the Kobe earthquake on January 17, 1995 (M_JMA7.3) and compared the surveyed damage with the PGV distribution as well as with the gradients of the PGV calculated around the damage areas. For the Kobe earthquake, we used the PGV distribution obtained by the strong‐motion simulation performed by Matsushima and Kawase 1 . In case of the Chuetsu earthquake, we estimated the ground motion using a broadband‐frequency‐based strong‐ground‐motion simulation method based on a multiasperity source model. In both cases, we calculated the gradients of the PGV along the geographical coordinates, with the amplitude of the PGV gradient vector being employed as the damage estimator. Our results show that the distribution of damage to underground water supply pipelines exhibits a greater correlation with the gradients of the PGV than with the PGV itself. Thus, the gradient of the PGV is a useful index for preparing initial‐screening hazard maps of underground facilities. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.