Resilience-based risk mitigation for road networks

Abstract

a b s t r a c tTransportation infrastructure has been identified by the US Department of Homeland Security as one of sixteen critical infrastructure systems essential to the well-being of modern societies. In this study, we propose a resilience-based framework for mitigating risk to surface road transportation networks. We utilize recent developments in modern network theory to introduce a novel metric based on system reliability and network connectivity to measure resilience-based performance of a road transportation network. The formulation of this resilience-based performance metric (referred in the paper as WIPW), systematically integrates the network topology, redundancy level, traffic patterns, structural reliability of network components (i.e. roads and bridge) and functionality of the network during community's post-disaster recovery, and permits risk mitigation alternatives for improving transportation network resilience to be compared on a common basis. Using the WIPW as a network performance metric, we propose a project ranking mechanism for identifying and prioritizing transportation network retrofit projects that are critical for effective pre-disaster risk mitigation and resilience planning. We further present a decision methodology to select optimal solutions among possible alternatives of new construction, which offer opportunities to improve the resilience of the network by altering its existing topology. Finally, we conclude with an illustration that uses the WIPW as the performance metric to support risk-based mitigation decisions using a hypothetical bridge network susceptible to seismic hazards.

Proposal for Holistic Assessment of Urban System Resilience to Natural Disasters

“…Network connections can be transformed to a mathematical graph model. System properties and interactions between individual components could be assessed by mathematical algorithms from graph theory [14][15][16]26]. When displaying the existing situation and analysing results, there are often used Geographic Information System (GIS) tools [7-10, 14, 15, 18, 28].…”

“…Most current investigations are focused on the socio-economic vulnerability of the urban system [3,[5][6][7][8][9] or structural weakness of its physical components [10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. On the other hand, there are few studies that treat the urban system as a whole.…”

Sustainability and Resilience in the Rehabilitation Of Road Infrastructures After an Extreme Event: An Integrated Approach

“…monetary, physical, technological, and informational) and human resources in the process of recovery to meet established priorities and achieve goals; − Rapidity is the capacity to meet priorities and achieve goals promptly to contain losses, recover functionality and avoid future disruption. Figure 3 graphically illustrates the properties of the resilience (Zhang, Wang 2016), and highlights the mutual interdependence, i.e. Rapidity in recovery the functionality depends on Resourcefulness and Redundancy.…”

“…Outcomes of resilience are: − More Reliability: lower probability for the infrastructure to reach limit states; − Fast recovery, namely the rapidity with which the functionality is re-established during a disaster; this is a paramount characteristic of resilient systems; − Low Socio-Economic Consequences, this outcome is guarantee by both probabilities of low service level reduction and fast recovery. It should be noted that any resilience-based analysis and decision require a quantitative measure of the system performance (Zhang, Wang 2016). The performance of a transportation network can be measured by different metrics, e.g.…”

System Scale Analysis of Road Infrastructure to Estimate Network Vulnerability

“…Accordingly, resilience is interpreted in the recent study as the ability of a system to return its baseline state (Andrić & Lu, 2017). Zhang W. and Wang N. in their article p u bl i s he d i n 2 016 i nt r o d u c e d t he methodology of weighted independent pathways as an outstanding improvement of the independent pathways' model (Zhang et al, 2016). During the presented process the performance reduction originated in the network damage is defined based on the modification of traffic structure or put it another way, based on the changes in rerouted flows.…”