SEISMIC VULNERABILITY AND RESILIENCE OF LARGE-SCALE TELECOMMUNICATION NETWORKS

Telecommunication networks play a key role in the economy of urban communities. As these infrastructures expand to meet the service demand, it is necessary to evaluate their vulnerability and resilience. Earthquakes and extreme natural events may cause severe damages to telecommunication towers which require multiple days of repair time. Despite some vulnerability studies have been carried out for tall raw-land towers and specific tower designs, large scale models at the network level are still lacking. In this paper, some of the most common rooftop tower designs are analyzed. Data is based on the city of Turin, Italy, and integrated in the telecommunication network of a virtual urban environment. Simplified structural models have been developed to describe the dynamic behavior of the rooftop towers. The input seismic action is represented by the acceleration time history at the top of each building. Consequently, the damage to the components mounted on the towers has been estimated based on the maximum displacement. Information about the failed components has been used to update the model of the network and to define vulnerability indexes that can be used in resilience analyses.