Vulnerability Assessment of Coastal Infrastructure to Storm Surges and Landslide-generated Tsunamis
Lead Research Organisation:
Brunel University London
Department Name: Civil and Environmental Engineering
Abstract
The UK coast is particularly exposed to two types of destructive long-period waves generated by storm surge and landslide-initiated tsunami (Bondevik et al. 2006) which can impact coastal infrastructure with widespread damage to residential, business and transport assets. Over the last decade, the UK has suffered some of the most costly and destructive storm surges because of deep cyclonic systems originating from the North Atlantic Ocean (Jaroszweski 2015, Hooper et al. 2015, Sibley 2015). For instance, the 2013/14 storm chain in the UK claimed two deaths and caused £1.3 billon damage (Chatterton 2016). The recent increase in number and intensity of storms due to Climate Change along with increasing population growth in coastal regions means government, local authorities and insurers need to better understand the vulnerability of built assets close to the sea (Dawson 2016).
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Mohammad Heidarzadeh (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Keith Adams (Student) |
| Description | The resilience of coastal railways to natural hazards such as storms and surges is an important aspect of disaster risk mitigation in those countries with vulnerable transport infrastructure. The risk model developed in this work is spatially specific to the Southwest England rail mainline through Dawlish but has application in other coastal railway alignments throughout the UK, such as in Cumbria, west and south Wales where similar hazards are encountered and the engineering assets were constructed during the same era and using similar design methods. Adaptation of the hazard elements to include local meteorological and wave environments would allow direct usage of the model in those regions. The model may also be of use in coastal railways subjected to diverse natural hazards such as Hurricane, Earthquakes and Tsunami. In addition, the damage mechanisms and failure pathways discovered show cascading effects which increase the severity of an event. Often insurance risk will underestimate these events due to not taking account of the cascading behaviour. |
| Exploitation Route | The work proposes an understanding of the failure of railway assets in the coastal margin. As more people populate the coasts around the world, infrastructure must be built to service this demand. Understanding the risks involved with infrastructure and how they respond to different hazard scenarios is of paramount importance to the insurance industry, the infrastructure owners, planners and central government. |
| Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Construction,Environment,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Transport |