Liquefaction Loss Estimation for the United States

Date: 4/24/2019

Time: 06:00 PM

Room: Grand Ballroom

In recent years, the USGS and others have worked to develop predictive regional models for ground failure with a focus on landslides and liquefaction. The models provide probability estimates of ground failure given the shaking from an earthquake event. The current preferred models (e.g. Zhu et al., 2017 for liquefaction) result in a probability estimate for the respective ground failure. The liquefaction probability is converted to a value that represents spatial extent as a percentage per pixel. Currently, the USGS includes the ground failure models as a product on the overview page for each earthquake on the USGS Earthquake Hazard Program website (as discussed by Wald et al., 2018). This is an important first step in including ground failure as part of the regional assessment of earthquake hazard; however, there is not full integration into the loss estimation part of the USGS products. Therefore, in this research we develop the datasets on liquefaction loss and infrastructure which can be used to provide loss estimates due to liquefaction after an earthquake. Liquefaction loss occurs across a variety of infrastructure categories: single family dwellings, commercial buildings, lifeline infrastructure (pipelines, roads, bridges), ports, and airports. Due to the common occurrence of liquefaction near coastlines and in artificial fill, extensive loss due to liquefaction is often related to port and airport facilities. Therefore, the development of GIS datasets by state for the United States will inform loss estimates. We present a liquefaction loss database and loss for a variety of infrastructure and building types. As an example, we also present a GIS infrastructure dataset for California.

Presenting Author: Laurie G. Baise

Authors