Performance- or risk-based earthquake engineering has gained widespread acceptance as a path to achieve user-specified performance targets, which include characterizations of casualties, repair cost, and business interruption, for intensity, scenario- and time-based assessments. There are tools whose roots are in U.S. nuclear energy (from the late 1970s and early 1980s) but no companion toolkit for performance-based earthquake engineering transportation infrastructure.

Earthquakes are not the only natural or man-made hazard posed to transportation networks, and there is no framework, in either the building or transportation domain, to accommodate them. The primary goals of this project are to:

• extend the FEMA P-58 framework for performance-based earthquake engineering of buildings to transportation networks
• apply the framework to a simple transportation network involving three or four bridges to demonstrate its use and identify opportunities for improvement
• expand the framework developed to accommodate extreme wind loadings

Ultimately, researchers will develop a plan to benefit the transportation community with tools and techniques for performance-based engineering of transportation networks regarding appropriate investment levels for new-build and retrofit/rehabilitation projects. In the long-term, this potentially may result in significant savings for large infrastructure projects.