Seismic vulnerability of rooftop telecommunication towers at urban scale

Mobile telecommunication networks are essential to support communication services, emergency response, and economic activity. As these systems at the urban level expand, their vulnerability to earthquakes and extreme hazards becomes increasingly critical.There is limited research on urban-scale models, particularly for rooftop-mounted towers, which are more susceptible to seismic damage due to amplification phenomena and building collapses.This paper focuses on common rooftop tower designs, clustering them height and section types, and evaluates their seismic vulnerability using simplified models.The network used as case study is a virtual testbed inspired by an Italian city, where crowdsourced data was used to inform the topology and the features of the components.Time history analyses were performed considering the acceleration recorded on top of the building.Direct physical damage to the towers and electronic component damage are assessed in terms of displacements and drift ratios.This approach provides a scalable method for assessing the seismic risk of telecommunication infrastructures at the urban level.Information about the failed components can be used to update the topology of the network and assess the loss of performance over time to calculate resilience.