Chapter 12 - Resilience of Transport Systems

Abstract

Different external and internal disruptive vents have frequently impacted the planned or regular/nominal performances of transport services. The most frequent external events have been extreme weather, natural disasters, epidemics/pandemics, terrorist threats/attacks, and regional wars. The most frequent internal disruptive events have been failures of the transport system infrastructure, supporting facilities and equipment, traffic incidents/accidents, and industrial actions of aviation staff. The performances of transport systems are categorized as (i) technical/technological; (ii) operational; (iii) economic; (iv) social; and (v) environmental. The corresponding indicators are defined and their analytical models developed for measuring these performances under regular/nominal and disruptive conditions. As such, they are used for assessing the reliability and resilience of the non-affected and affected transport systems reflecting their level of resistance to the impacts of these events considered as “robustness” and “speed” of recovery called “rapidity” or “recoverability.” This chapter deals with reliability and resilience of transport systems by (i) describing the main disruptive events impacting the transport system performances; (ii) developing the methodology consisting of the analytical models of indicators of performances as the figures of merit for assessing resilience; (iii) applying the models of indicators to assess resilience of the selected cases of road, rail, and air transport systems; (iv) elaborating some contingency measures through evacuation in cases of disruptions; and (v) analyzing possible relationships between the resilience and sustainability of transport systems.