Newsletter 10 - January 2023

After four years, the ITN URBASIS-EU project is coming to an end (May 2023). 
A first year of discovery of the ITN program and cross-discussion with private and public partners.
A second year of recruitment and discovery of young, dynamic and motivated ESRs.
A third complicated year with a Covid that we had not integrated in the risk and hazard section of the project.
A fourth year more serene but with an aftertaste of unfinished project.

In spite of this, and thanks to the involvement of everyone, the project has been a great success which is reflected in the number of high quality products (scientific and to large audience). 
Numerous advances have been made, for example in the prediction and simulation of ground motion, including source, propagation and site effects, or in the assessment of natural or anthropogenic seismic hazard and risk at the urban scale. Of course, we should not stop here, and some of the issues opened by URBASIS-EU should be further developed in the coming years. 

I hope that the network of collaborations between academic partners and the private sector initiated in the framework of this project, despite the COVID slowdown, will remain active for a long time to come to contribute to the reduction of seismic losses in urban areas. 
The ESRs are finishing their PhD project and they must be in the thick of it! Good luck to all and thank you for your involvement in the project. 

The next (and last) event will be the Spring School in Porquerolles in May 2023: see you there to conclude this project in the best conditions!
 
 Edito by Philippe Guéguen, coordinator of the ITN URBASIS project.

Incoming URBASIS-EU scientific deliverables

Deliverable D2.3 - Development of Physical-based Ground Motion Model for Induced Seismicity, Case Study: Preston New Road, UK
Preston New Road (PNR) gas sites have been experiencing shallow and small magnitudes earthquakes causing limited damage observed in the surrounding areas. Quantification of risk assessment is important to reduce the possible threats of the earthquake. Better quantification of risk will be influenced by a better determination of seismic hazard in the study area. Seismic hazard assessment by adapting and adjusting the existing GMPE for near field- shallow earthquakes has been evaluated in this study, specifically for PNR site. Stochastic simulation was performed to develop a new ground motion model for induced earthquakes in the PNR gas field by considering the new attenuation model obtained from spectral fitting method. The comparison between the new GMM in the present study with existing GMPEs from previous study were presented. The comparison with the GMPE for tectonic seismicity provides explanation of the difference characteristic of ground motion model for near field- shallow earthquake and the deeper tectonic earthquake which can explain the bias found in near-distance for application of the tectonic GMPE for induced cases.
Figure 1. Map of stations and event locations (recorded in 2018-2019): tectonic dataset for -1.4 ≤ML≤ 4.6 (left) and induced dataset from Preston New Road site with local magnitude range -1.7 ≤ ML < 3(right).

Figure 2. Residuals [in log-10] for PGV and PGA versus magnitude and distance represent tectonic dataset. Green dots refer to the calculated PGV and PGA using Atkinson (2015) model, while yellow dots correspond to calibrated model (Edwards et al., 2020), and red dots are the simulated PGV and PGA.


Figure 3. Residuals [in log-10] for PGV and PGA versus magnitude and distance represent PNR- induced dataset. Green dots refer to the calculated PGV and PGA using Atkinson (2015) model, while yellow dots correspond to calibrated model (Edwards et al., 2020), and blue dots are the simulated PGV and PGA
Deliverable D4.6 - Development of a Systemic Seismic Risk Assessment Method and Software to Evaluate the Systemic Vulnerability and Risk Assessment  of Interconnected Systems at Urban, Sub-urban and Industrail Scales
Critical infrastructures, whose components are interconnected and behave as a system, are vital for the functioning of society. The synergies between the components of the various systems might exacerbate the total losses at the urban scale after an earthquake event. However, the seismic risk assessment of infrastructures at system level are still limited due to the underlying complexities, paucity and heterogeneity of data and methods, and lack of comprehensive computation tool. This study proposes an approach for systemic risk assessment of infrastructure systems built upon strength of previous studies, and subsequently implementing it to a widely used open-source tool for global usage. This is applied to assess the performance of the test bed of the water supply system of Thessaloniki considering the scenario as well as event based probabilistic approach. This study and illustrative product provide an insight to policy makers, system operators, civil protection to identify the overall performances of service from infrastructures at urban as well as local scale considering both the direct damage and indirect consequences due to interconnectedness of the various systems for better mitigation and recovery plan.
Figure: Test Bed of Water Supply System of Thessaloniki, Isolation of each demand nodes – Complete Connectivity Loss (bottom-left), Partial connectivity loss of each demand node (bottomright) considering scenario based analysis representing 1978 Mw 6.5 Thessaloniki Earthquake

URBASIS-EU Spring School 2

URBASIS-EU is once again organizing a spring university, this time on "Urban seismology and Risk analysis", from May 15 to May 20, 2023, in Porquerolles, France.

The objectives of this second spring school are to provide students (PhD, post-doc and others) with an insight into research issues in engineering seismology, earthquake engineering and seismic risk in the broadest sense, and current and emerging research topics on seismic risk in interaction with the components that make up urban environments. Among these topics, we find the prediction of seismic ground motion and site effects, the emerging risk associated with induced seismicity, risk characterization and losses prediction, wave propagation in complex urban environments, insurance engineering, etc...

The spirit of this spring school is also to bring together young scientists and senior scientists coming from academic, private, non-profit and non-governmental sectors in a friendly spirit. In this way, time slots will be provided to create an effective friendly interaction between lecturers and students.

Registrations are open from January the 15th to February the 15th.

More information & Registrations