American Lifelines Alliance

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) have entered into a cooperative agreement to establish the American Lifelines Alliance (ALA) public-private partnership project, with the goal of reducing risks to lifelines (utility and transportation systems) from natural hazards.

Reducing Risk to Utility and Transportation Systems from Natural Hazards

The goal of ALA is to create and implement national consensus guidelines and conduct outreach programs for lifelines, under a cooperative agreement between the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).

Mission

Develop and implement national consensus guidelines and standards to improve the performance of new and existing lifelines (utility and transportation systems) in the event of natural hazards.

Goals

1. Conduct Guidelines and Standards Projects. Carry out projects that result in national consensus guidelines and standards developed through American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved standards developing organizations (SDOs).
2. Broaden Support Base. Obtain private and public support, including sponsorship, funding, and collaboration.
3. Conduct Implementation Projects. Facilitate the adoption and use of guidelines and standards by regulators, owners, customers, users, and other stakeholders.
4. Document Success Stories. Demonstrate the benefits of using natural hazards guidelines and standards using case histories.
5. Increase Awareness. Inform lifeline stakeholders and engineering professionals of ALA's mission, accomplishments, and benefits.

Approach

To support the development of national consensus guidelines for new and existing lifelines, ALA conducts and facilitates technical projects that improve or extend industry practices to the point where national consensus is achievable. ALA then submits the results of these projects to ANSI-accredited SDOs. Using this approach, ownership of each consensus guideline remains with the SDO, along with the responsibility for maintaining and updating it.

As shown below, ALA takes existing industry practice, facilitates its transformation into a guideline/ prestandard, and transfers it to an appropriate SDO. The SDO receives input from oversight/regulatory bodies, owner/operators, and all interested and affected parties, and develops a national consensus. ALA helps implement the guidelines and standards by undertaking outreach activities, technical training, and information dissemination to owners/operators.

Benefits

Consensus documents based on the ALA process provide:

• Guidance to lifeline owners and users for determining acceptable performance levels.
• Performance assessment procedures.
• Mitigation alternatives.
• Long-term update of guidelines within the private sector.

Partnership Opportunities

ALA is seeking public and private organizations to co-fund and provide in-kind support for mutually beneficial efforts. In addition to ASCE and FEMA, current partners include the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

Current ALA Projects

The following projects are currently under contract:

• Guideline on designing buried pipelines for extreme load conditions. The resulting guideline will be submitted to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) B31 Code Committee.
• Guideline for estimating the seismic vulnerability of water conveyance components (pipelines, tanks, canals, tunnels). The guideline provides a consistent approach to earthquake damage estimates and will be submitted to an SDO.
• Atmospheric ice load map. The project covers the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. The hazard map will be submited to the ASCE 7 Standards Committee and other SDOs.

Lifelines

Lifeline systems consist of:

• Utility Systems: Electric Power, Gas & Liquid Fuels,Telecommunications, Water & Wastewater
• Transportation Systems: Highways, Waterways, Air, Rail, Ports & Harbors

For More Information

Visit the FEMA website: www.fema.gov

ALA?s objective is to facilitate the creation, adoption, and implementation of design or retrofit guidelines and other American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-approved national consensus documents. These documents, when implemented by lifeline owners and operators, will systematically improve the performance of utility and transportation systems to acceptable levels in natural hazard events. Formation of the ALA is in direct response to needs identified over 10 years ago and explicitly requested in the 1990 reauthorization of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP).

Under the guidance of a working group, ALA has identified lifeline systems for which non-consensus guidelines, standards, and industry practices exist. ALA will take these existing documents, synthesize and improve them, as appropriate, and shepherd the resulting documents through a formal consensus process to develop nationally applicable guidelines. Each project will involve: a Standards Developing Organization (SDO) for consensus development, representatives from the appropriate sector of the utility or transportation agency community, and representatives from the relevant manufacturing and technical consulting communities.

ALA is seeking sponsoring organizations and stakeholders to co-fund and provide in-kind support to mutually beneficial efforts. In some cases, existing practices are not sufficient enough to be put through a formal consensus process. In these situations, the role of ALA may include funding or co-funding studies and projects in order to improve or extend practices to the point where national consensus is achievable.

ALA will use the following systematic procedure for assessing the performance of utility and transportation systems subjected to natural hazards, and identifying actions to reduce their risk. The following procedure also defines the scope of activities that ALA intends to support:

1. Identify and Quantify the Natural Hazard
   • Use existing nationally or regionally accepted maps and other data.
   • Apply probabilistic hazard analysis to establish hazards for evaluation of individual components, which can be used for procurement specifications.
   • Use multiple scenario representations to quantify hazards for evaluation of a spatially distributed lifeline system.

2. Identify and Quantify the Expected Damage States of Components within the System
   • Use component fragility curves to represent the probability that the component will be in a given damage state, as a function of the intensity of the hazard. The fragility curves are established by using engineering analysis procedures to assess the behavior of the component at various natural hazard intensity levels, and correlations between numerical results of the analysis and designated damage states. Random and systemic uncertainties in input data, engineering analysis procedures, and damage state correlations are considered.

3. Assess the Damage States and Functionality of the System Components when Affected by a Natural Hazard
   • Use scenarios in conjunction with fragility curves to determine component damage states, incorporating uncertainty in location and amount of damage.
   • Assess the functionality of each component when it is in the given damage state.

4. Evaluate System Functionality
   • Incorporate component functionalities from each scenario into a system model, and assess the system?s ability to accommodate post-hazard service demands.
   • Consider reduction in user serviceability of the system, service restoration time, and life safety threats.
   • Incorporate operator experience and expertise.
   • Evaluate multiple damage-state scenarios.
   • Aggregate the results for either individual scenarios or multiple scenarios.

5. Identify and Evaluate Impacts of the Loss or Reduction of System Functionality
   • Consider external impacts such as financial losses by customers or users, and government services impacts.
   • Consider internal impacts such as direct cost of damage, revenue loss, liability, and loss of public support.

6. Provide Guidance to the System Owner Regarding Selection of:
   • Criteria for specification of acceptable performance.
   • Criteria for new construction to minimize losses in future events.
   • Alternatives to mitigate unacceptable performance of existing systems.
   • Possible non-engineering methods to reduce post-hazard impacts of lifeline damage, such as system enhancement, post-hazard emergency response, and recovery plans.

When ALA-sponsored national consensus guidelines are applied to a specific utility or transportation system, the likely performance of the system in a natural hazard occurrence is quantified, and guidance for possible mitigation actions is provided.

It is anticipated that each consensus document will have a "home" in an SDO. This will ensure that the documents will be reviewed and updated on a regular basis, so that they remain current with respect to: new hazards data, system performance evaluation procedures, and changes in society?s acceptable levels of risk.

Systems suitable for the ALA process include:

• Potable water conveyance and distribution
• Waste-water
• Electric power transmission (~115 kV and higher)
• Electric power distribution (below ~115 kV)
• Natural gas transmission and distribution
• Highways
• Railroads
• Ports (seaports and inland waterway ports)
• Air transportation
• Telecommunications
• Oil and liquid fuel handling, transport, and storage.

To further facilitate natural hazards risk reduction activities by system owners, ALA will also undertake outreach programs to encourage the implementation of natural hazards risk reduction measures. These outreach programs will consider the many paths by which natural hazard risks can be reduced within the diverse types and sizes of lifeline systems. Concerns over budgeting, coordination with other internal programs, management support for risk reduction, and regulatory issues will be addressed. Also, those who are currently implementing natural hazards risk reduction programs will be asked to identify particularly useful guidelines and standards, as well as barriers to their implementation. ALA will coordinate these efforts with other public/private partnerships such as FEMA?s Project Impact.

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