Modeling Railway Damage due to Shake, Liquefaction, and Tsunami for the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

A healthy and sustainable urban society depends heavily on the proper functioning of a lifeline system and its resilience in case of a disaster. While engineers seek to reduce failure probability, risk managers focus on reducing negative consequence and improving recovery time when failure occurs. Researchers at AIR Worldwide have developed an earthquake model to assess railway damage due to shaking, liquefaction and tsunami for the insurance industry. This paper describes the model and presents its application to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. The entire Japan railway system is discretized at every 1km and the model is utilized to estimate the severity and geographic distribution of damage to the aggregate of railways' components. The model is validated by comparing the results from simulations with damage observations in the affected areas. Typical results from the model can help risk managers allocate critical resources in disaster management, repair and recovery processes.