Resilience of Transport Networks: A Review of Interpretations and Computational Metrics for Policy Making

Abstract

The assessment of the resilience of transport systems provides valuable information that leads to a deeper understanding of networks’ preparedness and response to external shocks. In the last few decades, many articles have assessed the resilience of transport networks but, up to date, neither a common definition nor a metric to compute transport resilience exists. This paper, by means of a relevant literature review based on 50 academic papers, aims to provide an overview of the resilience interpretation and computation state of the art. To do so, different interpretations of resilience are examined and a link between them and its related concepts is drawn. Resilience performance metrics are analysed and organized to give a comprehensive overview of the resilience computational subcategories. Finally, research agenda items are identified to highlight a research path to be followed to further deepen the analysis of transport resilience. The detailed set of interpretations and metrics provided in this article can support policymakers and transport operators’ empirical assessment of resilience, both at an ex-ante (predictive) and an ex-post level. The cluster classification gives additional insights on metrics applications to empirical cases and decision-making.

Keywords: Resilience, transport networks, disruption, performance metrics