LEAP-HI: Compounding Risk Assessment and Mitigation Options for Building Infrastructure Experiencing Coastal Flooding-Related Saltwater Deterioration and Seismic Hazard

This Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure (LEAP-HI) funded research project will examine how the combined effects of coastal flooding, saltwater deterioration, and earthquake motion impact buildings. Knowledge of how these hazards interact will be used to evaluate options for enhancing public safety and quality of life.

Current seismic risk predictions only consider buildings in their pristine states. However, many buildings in earthquake prone regions of the United States are also at risk of coastal flooding due to storm surge, high tide and rising sea levels, all factors that are being exacerbated by climate change. These buildings may deteriorate from contact with saltwater and be in a weakened state when earthquakes strike.

Communities living in these areas need support measuring the compounding risk of saltwater deterioration and earthquakes and with identifying effective mitigation options. The findings will guide designers, building owners, insurers, city officials, and emergency responders in hazard preparedness and response; will inform building design, repair, retrofit, and maintenance policies; and will raise public awareness of the long-term impacts of coastal flooding and mitigation options in earthquake prone areas.

This research will lead to realistic predictions of seismic damage or collapse probability of buildings, considering the impacts of deterioration from coastal flooding. It will result in a framework that can (1) simulate interconnected hazard impacts through multi-hazard and structural response modeling, (2) use probabilistic methods to quantify the increase in seismic damage risk at structure- and community-scales, (3) perform scenario analyses to investigate mitigation strategies, (4) analyze socio-cultural factors that shape protective action decision making, and (5) communicate the combined risk of saltwater deterioration and seismicity to the public and stakeholders for hazard awareness and risk reduction.

The resulting framework will be demonstrated on test beds to engage community members and stakeholders. Research methods include coastal hydrodynamic and wave modeling, corrosion modeling, structural testing of pristine and corroded specimens, quasi-static and dynamic response analyses of reinforced concrete and steel building archetypes, creating seismic fragility functions of corroded buildings, community risk assessment with and without mitigation, and constructing protective action decision models.

The research will converge knowledge from multiple disciplines, including coastal engineering, material science, structural and earthquake engineering, risk assessment, community resilience, cultural anthropology, risk perception, and disaster outreach. It will inspire and lay the groundwork for convergent research related to long-term health and resilience of infrastructure to multiple hazards.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.