Optimization of scenario construction for loss estimation in lifeline networks

Natural disasters have become a pressing national and international problem. Population growth, aging infrastructure, and climate change suggest that mounting losses will continue into the foreseeable future, hence mitigation and response planning is of increasing importance. The conduct of studies to support this type of regional planning often requires an estimation of the impacts of a single earthquake scenario on a region. This paper describes a method to identify a set of consequence scenarios that can be used in regional loss estimation for lifeline systems when computational demands are of concern, and the spatial coherence of individual consequence scenarios is important. This method is compared with Monte Carlo simulation.