Risk assessment of mega-city infrastructures related to land subsidence using improved trapezoidal FAHP

Hai-Min Lyu; Shui-Long Shen; Annan Zhou; Jun Yang

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135310

Risk assessment of mega-city infrastructures related to land subsidence using improved trapezoidal FAHP

Sci Total Environ. 2020 May 15:717:135310. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135310. Epub 2019 Nov 25.

Authors

Hai-Min Lyu¹, Shui-Long Shen², Annan Zhou³, Jun Yang⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou, Guangdong 515063, China. Electronic address: lvhaimin@sjtu.edu.cn.
² Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou, Guangdong 515063, China; Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Technology (Shantou University), Ministry of Education, Shantou, Guangdong 515063, China. Electronic address: shensl@stu.edu.cn.
³ Discipline of Civil and Infrastructure, School of Engineering, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Victoria 3001, Australia. Electronic address: annan.zhou@rmit.edu.au.
⁴ Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Electronic address: junyang@hku.hk.

PMID: 31839300
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135310

Abstract

This study presents an improved trapezoidal fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) to assess the risk of mega-city infrastructures related to land subsidence. The trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are used to express the relative importance between assessment factors. A new questionnaire is proposed in this study to collect judgements from consulting experts. Both the original AHP and the trapezoidal FAHP with the new questionnaire are applied to assess the risk of infrastructures in relation to land subsidence in Shanghai. The risks assessed using the trapezoidal FAHP at locations with significant infrastructures are higher than those assessed using the original AHP. This indicates that the trapezoidal FAHP method with the new questionnaire can be used to effectively capture the high risks for significant industrial infrastructures related to land subsidence. Moreover, the obtained results were compared with the current land subsidence prevention zone, and it was observed that the existing land subsidence prevention zone in government management guidelines does not sufficiently consider the vulnerability of significant infrastructures.

Keywords: Land subsidence; Risk assessment; Trapezoidal FAHP; Urban infrastructures.