Damage assessment of mobile communication facilities subjected to major earthquakes

Communication systems play a critical role in emergency response during disasters. In this study, we proposed a methodology for assessing damage to mobile communication facilities subjected to major earthquakes, with consideration of both ground shaking and power outage effects. Fragility curves were employed to evaluate the damage to base stations due to ground shaking. The power transmission relationship among electrical substations was established to analyze the impact of power outage on base stations. Integration of the two evaluations yielded the total number of affected base stations and the distribution of malfunctioning base stations in a city or county. The 2016 Meinong earthquake and the 2018 Hualien earthquake were selected as case studies to verify the analytical results. The predictions exhibited acceptable agreement with disaster investigation reports from the two earthquake events. The proposed methodology enables a prompt evaluation of the seismic impact on mobile communication facilities, which could help governments in allocating rehabilitation resources during emergency response or disaster mitigation planning.