Integrated approach to the seismic vulnerability assessment of industrial underground equipment and pipelines

Severe requirements for the safety of industrial equipment are necessary when large amount of toxic and flammable materials are handled. Among others, structural reliability of infrastructures for storage and transportation may result as an effective prevention and mitigation measure of effects related to accidental scenario induced by natural hazard such as earthquakes. This is the background of a multi-disciplinary study on the assessment of seismic vulnerability of selected industrial equipment, like the pipelines, underground tanks and buried basins, whose main aspects are herein summarized. In this paper, a collection of data concerning the damages induced by earthquakes on pipelines was carried out. The main objective is the construction of a database, in view of the development of observational fragility curves depending on the specific pipelines type, in order to provide simplified tools for industrial quantitative risk analysis.