Abstract
Earthquakes pose a persistent and significant threat to the movement of people, goods, and services. While agencies have made progress on emergency response, planning for recovery (how quickly transportation systems can be restored after a major event) remains limited. A key challenge is that earthquake modeling and transportation system modeling have remained largely separate efforts, making it difficult for agencies to anticipate disruptions, prioritize investments, and coordinate recovery across jurisdictions. To address this gap, the research team worked with agency stakeholders, such as BART and Caltrans, and the geotechnical and structural earthquake engineers at UCLA to develop an integrated modeling tool that links earthquake impacts to transportation system performance and recovery. The team applied it to the Berkeley Hills corridor, a critical connection between the inner East Bay and Contra Costa County served by the BART Berkeley Hills Tunnel and the parallel Caldecott Tunnel on State Route 24. Four scenarios of increasing severity were tested, from minor tunnel damage lasting a few weeks to full closure lasting a year or more, focusing on the busy weekday morning commute. The tool is designed to support recovery planning in other corridors as well.
