Disaster waste clean-up system performance subject to time-dependent disaster waste accumulation

• Published in: Natural hazards (Dordrecht) Vol. 91; no. 2; pp. 717 - 734
• Main Authors: Cheng, Cheng, Zhang, Lihai, Thompson, Russell George
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.03.2018; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Accumulation; Capacity; Case studies; Civil Engineering; Decision analysis; Disaster management; Disasters; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; Emergency preparedness; Environmental cleanup; Environmental Management; Geophysics/Geodesy; Geotechnical Engineering & Applied Earth Sciences; Hydrogeology; Management systems; Natural Hazards; Original Paper; Reliability; Reliability analysis; Sensitivity analysis; System reliability; Waste management; Disaster waste clean-up; First-order second-moment; Reliability index; Disaster waste accumulation
• ISSN: 0921-030X; 1573-0840
• DOI: 10.1007/s11069-017-3151-5

Disasters can produce a substantial amount of waste that can threaten the capacity of waste management systems. This paper presents a methodology for estimating waste accumulation caused by disasters considering the uncertainty of the timing and scale of disasters that can be used to estimate the return period and the reliability of the disaster waste management system. To estimate the reliability of the system, the first-order second-moment reliability assessment method, in which the reliability index ( β ) is used to judge the reliability of a system, is applied in this paper. In addition, two case studies illustrate how the methods can be applied to the real world. The reliability index curve of the system developed from sensitivity analysis can provide information for decision-makers in terms of disaster waste clean-up arrangements. The approach developed can be used to analyze the effects of different parameters involved in the waste clean-up system after disasters.