Methodology for assessing earthquake-induced road interruption due to structural and nonstructural debris applied to a virtual testbed

Earthquakes may cause different levels of damage to buildings, from minor nonstructural damage to total structural collapse. As a consequence, debris generated by both nonstructural elements collapse and structural failure may locally interrupt road infrastructure, affecting both vehicular and pedestrian mobility and potentially delaying emergency operations. This study proposes a methodology to estimate the probability of road interruption due to debris from reinforced concrete and masonry buildings at the census-section level. The approach is applied to a virtual testbed subjected to a severe seismic event and developed within the RETURN project, in order to assess road network vulnerability at the census-section level across different urban contexts representative of typical Italian built environments. Results show that road interruption probability is primarily governed by urban characteristics, such as building density, structural typology, construction age, and street layout. The proposed methodology provides a practical framework for large-scale applications based on aggregated data and represents a basis for future developments and applications to real case studies.