Natural Hazards Risk and Resiliency Research Center (NHR3)
Natural Gas Infrastructure Safety and Integrity, Seismic Risk Assessment and Enhanced Training
Project Goals
Developing a risk assessment methodology that quantifies the earthquake ground motion, fault displacement hazard, landslide and liquefaction risks for California gas infrastructure (i.e. gas pipeline and natural gas storage);
Create a tool that utilizes the risk assessment methodology to help identify, prioritize, and mitigate earthquake both before and after a seismic event is detected.
Our Approach
Apply state-of-the-art procedures to define hazards that threaten gas storage and pipeline infrastructure, including fault rupture, landslides, and liquefaction;
Formulate a performance-based risk management approach that is sufficiently flexible, yet quantitative, and test the methodology in collaboration with the partnering pipeline and storage facility operators in California;
Implement the new risk management approach into an easy-to-use, free, open source, software tool;
Develop a guidance document to help use the software tool;
Document the results and transfer the knowledge gained to gas pipeline and storage facility operators.
Our Approach (continued)
Element 1: Quantification of Seismic Hazards is composed to three items:
Ground Motion Hazard
Fault Displacement Hazard
Landslides and Liquefaction
Element 2: Quantification of Seismic Risk will relate levels of seismic-induced hazards to failure probability of engineered components and the consequent gas release.
Element 3: Development of Risk Analysis Software for End-Users: This Element will develop an open-source standalone software with a user-friendly graphical interface will to enable risk assessment and management of a given natural gas infrastructure in an efficient and effective way. It will offer analysis capability at different levels of complexity according to the needs and objectives of the users. The results will be visualized spatially beside the detailed information to better identify the risks in the natural gas infrastructures and prioritize the actions and strategies for mitigating these risks based on expected frequencies of seismic events
Benefits of this Project
There are four market segments for the risk assessment tool: IOUs, oil and gas transmission pipeline companies, academia, and pipeline risk consultants.
Additional benefits:
Economic: The risk assessment tool will reduce the need for costly site-specific risk assessments and help decision makers determine the most cost-effective means to achieve acceptable seismic performance.
Increased safety: Improved understanding of seismic threats to pipeline and storage systems and effective mitigation measures will help decision makers reduce the probability of failure.
Environmental: Increased reliability of pipelines and storage systems resulting from the use of the tool developed in this program will decrease the likelihood of excessive greenhouse gas emissions.
Energy security and public health benefits: The risk management practices facilitated by the tool developed in this project lead to a reduction in pipeline failure and a decrease in the potential for unacceptable interruptions in gas necessary for homes, communities, power generation, and critical facility customers (e.g., hospitals, airports, emergency shelters).
