Pavement Fragility Modeling Framework and Build-in Resilience Strategies for Flood Hazard

Pavement infrastructure is experiencing unanticipated climate conditions due to global warming. Extreme weather events, such as flooding and freezing rain, have become increasing concerns in pavement vulnerability analysis and maintenance & rehabilitation management. Flooding is known as the most frequent natural hazard in Canada, and flood-induced damages account for a significant portion of disasters in the world. This paper presents a pavement fragility modeling framework through analyzing pavement flooding, flooded pavement failure patterns, and performance impact factors to systematically unveil the impact of flood hazard. Pavement flood load, pavement condition, human interferences and climate behavior after flood are main factors affecting short- and long-term pavement damages. The Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) is employed to simulate the effect of 36 extreme hydrologic events on typical pavements in Ontario, Canada. Different extreme precipitation magnitude, number of events, and event duration were loaded on the pavement structures. Results show that the MEPDG is not sensitive to short duration exposure of extreme precipitation, and only extreme events contribute to notable international roughness index (IRI) changes. For longer duration extreme events, different pavement structures behave differently. Pavement IRI increases as the number of event cycles increase. The loss of pavement functions is significant due to the extreme events. Recommendations for pavement build-in resilience strategies for floods are also proposed for future pavement design and flood hazard management.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AFD00 Section - Pavements.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Lu, Donghui
  • Tighe, Susan L
  • Xie, Wei-Chau
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
• Date: 2017

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Climate change; Disaster resilience; Flood damage; Floods; Pavement design; Pavements; Recommendations
• Identifier Terms: International Roughness Index; Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide
• Uncontrolled Terms: Fragility; Pavement damage
• Geographic Terms: Ontario (Province)
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Hydraulics and Hydrology; Pavements;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01622708
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 17-01735
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 18 2017 3:43PM