Rural Infrastructure Earthquake Risk Planning for Public Safety and Economic Stability

Earthquakes pose a significant and growing threat to rural communities across the Western United States, where transportation networks are critical lifelines for public safety and economic stability. Ground shaking, surface rupture, and aftershocks can severely damage roadways, bridges, and utilities, disrupting mobility and delaying emergency response. Earthquakes can also trigger cascading hazards—including post-earthquake fires, debris flows, and utility failures—that further compromise evacuation routes and supply chains. These risks are particularly acute in rural areas, where road connectivity is sparse, detours are limited, and small businesses play a central role in community stability. This project addresses two key gaps: (1) rural earthquake evacuation and transportation system management under cascading hazard conditions, and (2) business continuity for small enterprises dependent on vulnerable transportation infrastructure. First, a Community Advisory Board (CAB) will guide the research, ensuring that local knowledge, operational realities, and stakeholder priorities shape the study design. Second, we will develop a GeoAI-driven, agent-based model to simulate rural evacuations under earthquake and cascading hazard scenarios, integrating seismic hazard data (e.g., ShakeMap), transportation network characteristics, traffic data, and socio-demographic information. Third, we will build a multi-hazard business continuity model that predicts how rural businesses recover following earthquake-related disruptions, incorporating infrastructure damage, supply chain dependencies, workforce displacement, and access constraints.

• Record URL:
  • https://www.ctips.org/projects/details.php?id=656

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Terminated
• Funding: $210,000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348308

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Center for Transformative Infrastructure Preservation and Sustainability

  North Dakota State University
  Fargo, North Dakota  United States  58108-6050
• Project Managers:

  Tolliver, Denver

• Performing Organizations:

  Utah State University

  Civil and Environmental Engineering Department
  Logan, UT  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Grajdura, Sarah

• Start Date: 20251117
• Expected Completion Date: 20271116
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program
• Source Data: CTIPS-057

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Artificial intelligence; Disaster resilience; Earthquakes; Evacuation; Rural areas; Simulation; Small business
• Subject Areas: Economics; Environment; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01975811
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Center for Transformative Infrastructure Preservation and Sustainability
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348308
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Jan 8 2026 4:12PM