Resilience of Road Infrastructure in Response to Extreme Weather Events

Abstract

Transportation infrastructure, as a major component of urban infrastructure, plays an important role in critical emergencies such as natural disasters and extreme events. The functional loss of transportation facilities, mostly highway pavement structures, negatively impacts the disaster management process and could significantly delay the evacuation and recovery process. Pavement structures are the main components of road assets that need to be maintained, rehabilitated, and reconstructed. The performance of pavement structures can be significantly affected by environmental factors. Therefore, evaluating the resilience of pavements during extreme events and natural disasters is of major interest to highway agencies and coastal stakeholders. Infrastructure resilience is an important contributor to its long term sustainability. This study focused on the state of the practice concerning resilience of pavement structures during extreme events. A decision making algorithm and risk assessment framework was evaluated to study the resilience of highway and pavement systems in critical conditions. The results of this study could further be expanded to the broader range of transportation infrastructure in response to the extreme events in urban and rural areas.