Pre-disaster investment model for strengthening the Chinese railway system under earthquakes

1 Chinese railway system serves as an important role for the economy of China and the travel needs 2 of its citizens. As China is subject to frequent earthquake events, it is important to investigate 3 how to strengthen the railway system to retain its service after earthquakes. This paper proposes a 4 comprehensive methodology to suggest the optimal investment plan using historical earthquake 5 events data and GIS technology. The proposed optimization model minimizes the expected 6 service loss under future earthquakes subject to an investment budget constraint. The expected 7 service loss is constructed at the service layer of the Chinese railway system that is determined by 8 the damage state of the railway link as well as the function restoration curve at the physical layer. 9 Monte Carlo simulation and Genetic Algorithm are applied to solve the optimization model 10 effectively. Numerical results show that the solution suggested by the proposed optimization 11 model is more responsive to the earthquake impact on the railway system compared with plans 12 suggested by topology-based methods. The proposed methodology can be extended to investigate 13 the investment plans for other transportation systems under threats from natural disasters. 14 Yan, He, Hong, Ouyang, and Peeta, 1