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Emergency responders are typically notified immediately after a major earthquake strikes. However, a time delay, called the travel time, is usually experienced between the notification and the arrival of the responders on the scene. The reparative work necessary after the responders arrive takes an additional amount of time, called the response time, depending on the nature of the damage and the volume of resources available. In a smart city, the restoration time, which is the sum of the travel and response times, should be minimized. A new discrete-event-based simulation (DEBS) model is presented in this paper to estimate the restoration time needed to bring the situation under control after notifying the response center. The DEBS model not only relaxes restrictive assumptions on travel time made by the Markov chain models from the existing literature, but it can also quantify the impact of resource volumes on restoration times. Additionally, the DEBS model is very useful for training purposes. The DEBS model was employed on a case study from the state of Missouri (U.S.). The experiments demonstrate that numerical results with the model take a short amount of computational time and that it can be implemented on a real-time basis in a smart-city infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper focuses on the model updating of complex structural systems. Traditional model updating techniques optimize an objective function to calculate one single optimal model that behaves similarly to the real structure and represents the physical characteristics of the structure. One can argue that due to numerical and identification errors, and the limited number of sensors in structures, a local minimum rather than the global minimum could be a better representation of the physical properties of the structure. The methodology proposed in this paper identifies physically different local minima, giving the analyst the power to decide what model would better describe the system base on his/her experience and engineering judgment. Two examples are used in the paper to explore the capabilities of the technique. First, a simple numerical example is used to demonstrate the existence and correct identification of local minima in a model updating objective function. The second problem identifies model updating alternatives for a finite element model of the Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge. Acceleration records from the bridge’s permanent instrumentation are used to update the model. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]