The Role of Climate Change in the Assessment of the Seismic Resilience of Infrastructures

Abstract

Climate change is modifying scientific attitudes toward pre- and post-event assessments of natural hazards. Unprecedented levels of destruction need renewed focus on addressing and protecting communities forcing the decision makers to change their attention to vulnerability and risk assessment. In particular, society and economy rely heavily on infrastructures, as fundamental links for movement of goods and people, and are extremely vulnerable to multiple hazards (such as droughts, floods, storms, and coastal hazards). In this regard, resilience quantifies the recovery time and procedures to facilitate and enhance pre-hazard and post-hazard event mitigation and emergency response strategies of systems and entire communities. Resilience calculation depends on two important contributions: loss and recovery models that need to consider the effects of climate change. This paper aims to propose a methodology that implements the most recent approaches to assess climate change inside the traditional framework of resilience. The proposed framework is then applied to a case study of a bridge.