Preliminary seismic risk analysis of a data network

The seismic risk assessment of spatially distributed infrastructures is gaining increasing research attention. Data communication networks, although less investigated than other infrastructures, have large importance for the immediate post-event emergency management and community resilience. In this study the framework of simulation-based probabilistic seismic risk analysis of data communication infrastructures is applied to a real case study; i.e., the interuniversity data network of the Campania region (southern Italy). The network is constituted by point-like facilities, that is, racks located within buildings and containing the devices routing and managing traffic, and distributed links, that is, buried fiber-optic cables. The network performance was assessed following the performance-based earthquake engineering framework extended to spatially distributed systems. The seismological, geological and geotechnical features of the region were characterized together with the seismic vulnerability of each element of the network. Moreover, to overcome the absence of available fragilities for buried fiber-optic cables, and as a difference with respect to previous work of the authors on the topic, the fragilities recently developed for buried electrical cables are adapted. The network performance is quantified in terms of traffic lost, that is the difference between traffic transferred through the network before and after the seismic event. Results indicate a relatively low level of losses when the network’s region is hit by an earthquake and, according to the adopted models, a low influence of cables fragility on the performance of the network.