Resilience-Based Design of Geotechnical Assets-Paper

Paper

Pdf Summary

The paper proposes a geotechnical resilience-based design (GRBD) framework for transportation assets that accounts for changing hazards and deterioration over an asset’s service life. Unlike Allowable Stress Design (ASD) and Load and Resistance Factor Design (LRFD), which primarily evaluate design loads and resistance, GRBD tracks asset capacity, physical condition, and performance over time—including the effects of repeated extreme events and maintenance.<br /><br />The framework responds to increasingly frequent and intense events, such as floods and heavy rainfall, and to non-stationary conditions that traditional designs based largely on historical data may miss. It recommends forecasting future loading scenarios and evaluating how sequences of events affect damage, reliability, serviceability, and recovery. Design should maintain acceptable capacity, condition, and performance while considering lifecycle costs, planned maintenance, and rehabilitation.<br /><br />Two illustrative case studies demonstrate the approach. In the first, repeated flood and drought cycles cause cracking and water intrusion in a mechanically stabilized earth wall system, progressively reducing soil strength and increasing lateral pressures until serviceability or strength failure may occur. In the second, repeated heavy rainfall raises groundwater levels and reduces slope stability: the estimated failure probability rises from 0.6% under normal groundwater conditions to 7.8% with an elevated water table. Adding two rows of drilled shafts improves stability, reducing the estimated failure probability to 0.10%.<br /><br />The authors present GRBD as a developing extension of reliability-based design. Its goals are to better account for future hazards, cumulative damage, asset performance, and recovery, supported by effective geotechnical asset management. The paper outlines the framework but does not yet quantify resilience indices.

Keywords

geotechnical resilience-based design

transportation assets

non-stationary hazards

service life deterioration

floods and heavy rainfall

reliability-based design

slope stability

mechanically stabilized earth wall

lifecycle maintenance

failure probability