Liquefaction Hazards for Seismic Risk Analysis

Abstract

Seismic risk analysis is a helpful tool that supports decision making for planning and prioritizing seismic risk management strategies. This paper focuses on the importance of an appropriate geotechnical hazard representation within a seismic risk analysis process, focusing on the earthquake-induced geotechnical hazards due to liquefaction. After an overview of alternative methods for the representation of the liquefaction hazards available in the literature, more refined approaches are proposed for implementation in the seismic risk analysis. As a matter of fact, conventional seismic risk and damage scenario analyses use generalized parameters for estimating the consequences of liquefaction that provide a qualitative description of the effects of liquefaction instead of quantitative engineering parameters for the ground deformation. This paper suggests a simple remedy to this practice through the use of some existing methods for estimating the ground distortion caused by liquefaction.