Seismic Risk Assessment and Management of Natural Gas Storage and Pipeline Infrastructure in CA
This project will improve current Seismic Risk Assessment of Natural Gas Storage and Pipeline Infrastructure by addressing earthquake hazards (i.e., ground shaking and displacement from surface faulting, landslides, and liquefaction) and their
The Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Los Angeles Campus
Recipient
Los Angeles, CA
Recipient Location
24th
Senate District
51st
Assembly District
$3,485,255
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
This project kicked-off in January of 2020. The project team has begun working on quantification of ground motion hazards and probabilistic fault displacement hazards and developing seismic resistance models for gas pipeline and gas storage system. We anticipate the first deliverables from this project the beginning of 2021.
The Issue
The United States Geological Survey predicts that "California has more a than 99% chance of having a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake within the next 30 years". Natural gas storage and pipeline infrastructure may be affected by such a seismic event. Assessing seismic risks of gas infrastructures is difficult because: the data used to quantify seismic hazards has significant uncertainties; the standard risk assessments are quantitative using Finite Element Analysis software, which can be slow in development and costly or simple models, which are subjective; and it is difficult to take into account the correlation with other non-seismic hazards (e.g. corrosion).
Project Innovation
This project will improve current seismic risk assessment of natural gas storage and pipeline infrastructure by addressing earthquake hazards (i.e., ground shaking and displacement from surface faulting, landslides, and liquefaction), develop an opensource performance-based risk management tool that is flexible, yet quantitative, and test the methodology in collaboration with the partnering pipeline and storage facility operators. The project team will use state of the art seismic hazards assessments and Bayesian network to quantify the seismic risk of natural gas storage and pipeline infrastructure in California.
Project Benefits
This open source seismic risk assessment software tool will capture knowledge from multiple domains of expertise and combine it into one simple risk assessment software. This project will also capture all geotechnical threats to gas pipeline and gas storage systems (i.e., earthquake ground motion, fault rupture displacement, landslide and liquefactions). The model created will be able to outperform the speed of current detailed analyses tools and outperform the quality of simple qualification tools. In addition, the open source software tool will integrate real time seismic activity data and therefore will be able to perform predictions (before earthquake) and failure analysis (after earthquake).
Safety
This open source seismic assessment software tool will help identify the most likely threats and enable decision makers to focus on the most seismically hazardous gas pipelines and underground gas storage systems for mitigation measures.
Key Project Members
Yousef Bozorgnia
Subrecipients
California Institute of Technology
University of Texas, Austin
D.G. Honegger Consulting
California Geological Survey
DNV GL USA, Inc.
Lettis Consultants International, Inc.
University of Southern California
Linda Alatik Consulting
Match Partners
The Regents of the University of California on behalf of the Los Angeles Campus
