Entropy analysis for identifying significant parameters for seismic soil liquefaction

A novel application of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique to seismic soil liquefaction, a complex problem in earthquake geotechnical engineering, is presented. Seismic soil liquefaction depends on a diversified set of physical parameters with highly non-linear interconnections. Factors governing liquefaction may broadly be grouped as seismic parameters, site conditions and primarily dynamic soil properties, as the stimulus itself is manifestly dynamic. Each of these factors incorporates a wide range of variety of parameters that characterize liquefaction, to a varying degree of significance, such as: the magnitude, effective overburden pressure, shear modulus, normalized standard penetration blow count N₁]₆₀, etc. Estimating rapid, yet accurate and reliable liquefaction susceptibility requires identification of the most significant factors controlling liquefaction. Thus a new concept of extracting significant parameters and gauging their importance is carried out by assigning them weights by applying MCDM introduced herein, whose evaluation is accomplished by means of an ‘entropy method’. In line with this, a relative reliability risk index (R³I) is computed indicating the ranking that directly reflects the severity of risk for liquefaction. Although the entropy analysis is carried out separately for the three multivariate criteria, it is remarkable that the R³I evaluated for each of these gives consistent ranking.