Seismic Performance of Transportation Hubs in New Zealand: Evaluation of Seismic Performance and Network exposure and vulnerability with New Seismic Hazard Scenarios

Abstract

This thesis presents a broad overview of historically significant landslides both in New Zealand and internationally. A broad, high-level overview aims to assess gaps in our current understanding of the performance of transportation hubs. An overview of 5 historical earthquakes was outlined as part of the literature review component of this thesis. Of the five scenarios explored, the 1994 Northridge earthquake, 1995 Kobe Earthquake, 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, 2010-2011 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence, and the 2016 Kaikoura Earthquake. Each scenario explored the seismic demand on the transportation infrastructure asset and the consequence and economic loss to the community. Transportation hub databases were then collated and compiled. In assets without public data, manual digitisation was undertaken and assigned with known information from the internet. To understand the seismic demand on the transportation hubs in past earthquakes, geospatial platforms were deployed to assess the exposure and vulnerability of the transportation hubs. An assumed seismic design load was assigned to each transport hub based on its location or hazard factor (Z) and is then evaluated against historical earthquake scenarios to assess the performance of the current building design guide. A comparison of the seismic demand from the National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) and CyberShake to infer the distribution on vulnerable hubs suggested that the seismic performance using the existing NZS 1170.5 has been generally good across most events explored. Similar vulnerability assessments were undertaken with new fault seismic scenarios from the new National Seismic Hazard Model. The majority of the seismic demand yielded from the scenario does not exceed the assumed design load; faults found closer to dense urban centres are more likely to observe seismic demand that may exceed the design load.