Resilience of Urban Mobility Systems: Combining Urban Subsystems and Threats with a System Dynamics Approach

Modeling the resilience of urban mobility when exposed to the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative system dynamics approach

“…We identified, through a literature survey, a significant number of variables and their associations through a literature review, which were further selected and aggregated to describe causal relationships and to build the qualitative models. The present study comprises an extension of another study ( Lara & Rodrigues da Silva, 2021 ), which described and analyzed the dynamics of urban mobility systems when affected by environmental threats (such as climate change, flooding, and natural hazards).…”

“…In the urban mobility context, a sustainable urban mobility system should encourage residents to use public transport ( Shakibaei et al, 2021 ) and active modes, and reduce the affinity towards private cars ( Manzira et al, 2022 ), minimize transport-related emissions and promote equitable access to services and transport infrastructure. Additionally, according to Lara and Rodrigues da Silva (2021) and based on the principles of persistence, adaptability, and transformability proposed by Folke et al (2010) and Fernandes et al (2019) , we define the urban mobility resilience as a system that can: maintain the existing conditions or quickly return to desired functions of mobility maintaining an acceptable level of economic, environmental, and social sustainability (persistence). absorb the first damage and minimize the impacts from a disturbance providing alternatives to return to the basic mobility functionalities, without compromising economic, environmental, and social sustainability (adaptability).…”

“…A commonly used approach in SD modeling is to first create qualitative diagrams - Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD) - of the primary feedback loops of a system, which then form the basis for developing quantitative models. Besides being the first step of developing quantitative models, qualitative models enable a comprehensive understanding of the system behavior, which is important for identifying policies or strategies responses that may be counterintuitive, impairing the performance, or malfunction of the system ( Lara & Rodrigues da Silva, 2021 ). This study focuses on the aspect of the development of a qualitative model in the form of CLDs.…”

“…The study conducted by Lara and Rodrigues da Silva (2021) characterized the resilience of urban mobility systems in the face of environmental threats (such as climate change, flooding, and natural hazards). The present study extends the research carried out by Lara and Rodrigues da Silva (2021) , however, considering the COVID-19 pandemic as a threat.…”

“…The study conducted by Lara and Rodrigues da Silva (2021) characterized the resilience of urban mobility systems in the face of environmental threats (such as climate change, flooding, and natural hazards). The present study extends the research carried out by Lara and Rodrigues da Silva (2021) , however, considering the COVID-19 pandemic as a threat. Therefore, considering the study problem and the research gap, we intend to answer the following research questions: RQ1: Which components of urban mobility systems are most affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic?…”