‘Resilience thinking’ in transport planning

Abstract

Resilience has been discussed in ecology for over forty years. While some aspects of resilience have received attention in transport planning, there is no unified definition of resilience in transportation. To define resilience in transportation, I trace back to the origin of resilience in ecology with a view of revealing the essence of resilience thinking and its relevance to transport planning. Based on the fundamental concepts of engineering resilience and ecological resilience, I define "comprehensive resilience in transportation" as the quality that leads to recovery, reliability and sustainability. Observing that previous work in resilience analysis in transportation has focussed on addressing engineering resilience rather than ecological resilience, I conclude that transformability has been generally overlooked and needs to be incorporated in the analysis framework for comprehensive resilience in transportation.

Vulnerability and resilience of transport systems – A discussion of recent research

“…The latter curves depend typically on actions of ex ante mitigation or ex post adaptation. Wang (2015), also drawing on Holling (1973), argues that the concept of resilience should be even more comprehensive to include recovery from disasters, reliability of day-to-day fluctuations in demand and capacity as well as sustainability of the transport system with respect to long-term changes such as climate change.…”

Adaptation Becoming Business as Usual: A Framework for Climate-Change-Ready Transport Infrastructure

“…Academically there are two broad definitions of transport resilience stemming from Holling [47]: (i) engineering resilience, i.e., the resistance of the system to a disturbance, and the speed at which it can return to a steady state, e.g., [48]; and, (ii) ecological resistance, or the amount of disturbance that a system can take before it changes to a new steady state, e.g., [49]. Wang [50] suggests comprehensive resilience should include recovery, reliability and sustainability, noting that disaster could be an opportunity to improve the system. By considering resilience more broadly (i.e., not just in terms of robustness) more effective options can be generated from which to develop the action plan.…”

Estimating individual physical capability (IPC) to make journeys by bicycle

“…sudden change in travel need). Policies and visions for cycling futures based on capability have potential to feedback more radical options for change (Wang, 2015;Banister & Hickman, 2013;Diamond, 2006;Goodwin & Dender, 2013;Philips et al, 2013;Tight et al, 2011;Timms, Tight, & Watling, 2014;Urry, 2010), driven by the literature on environmental limits on resource use (e.g. Berners-Lee & Clark, 2013;McGlade & Ekins, 2015;Rockstrom et al, 2009).…”