Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Classification of road damage due to earthquakes

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Natural Hazards Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Earthquakes cause massive road damage which in turn causes adverse effects on the society. Previous studies have quantified the damage caused to residential and commercial buildings; however, not many studies have been conducted to quantify road damage caused by earthquakes. In this study, an attempt has been made to propose a new scale to classify and quantify the road damage due to earthquakes based on the data collected from major earthquakes in the past. The proposed classification for road damage due to earthquake is called as road damage scale (RDS). Earthquake details such as magnitude, distance of road damage from the epicenter, focal depth, and photographs of damaged roads have been collected from various sources with reported modified Mercalli intensity (MMI). The widely used MMI scale is found to be inadequate to clearly define the road damage. The proposed RDS is applied to various reported road damage and reclassified as per RDS. The correlation between RDS and earthquake parameters of magnitude, epicenter distance, hypocenter distance, and combination of magnitude with epicenter and hypocenter distance has been studied using available data. It is observed that the proposed RDS correlates well with the available earthquake data when compared with the MMI scale. Among several correlations, correlation between RDS and combination of magnitude and epicenter distance is appropriate. Summary of these correlations, their limitations, and the applicability of the proposed scale to forecast road damages and to carry out vulnerability analysis in urban areas is presented in the paper.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14
Fig. 15
Fig. 16
Fig. 17
Fig. 18
Fig. 19
Fig. 20
Fig. 21
Fig. 22
Fig. 23
Fig. 24
Fig. 25
Fig. 26
Fig. 27
Fig. 28
Fig. 29
Fig. 30
Fig. 31
Fig. 32
Fig. 33
Fig. 34
Fig. 35
Fig. 36
Fig. 37
Fig. 38
Fig. 39
Fig. 40
Fig. 41
Fig. 42

Similar content being viewed by others

References

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    Panjamani Anbazhagan, Sushma Srinivas & Deepu Chandran

Authors
  1. Panjamani Anbazhagan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sushma Srinivas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  3. Deepu Chandran
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Panjamani Anbazhagan.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Anbazhagan, P., Srinivas, S. & Chandran, D. Classification of road damage due to earthquakes. Nat Hazards 60, 425–460 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-0025-0

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-011-0025-0

Keywords