Integrating disaster management planning into road infrastructure asset management

Abstract

Climate change presents challenges for road infrastructure asset managers, with uncertainty about the impacts of increasingly frequent and intense disasters on asset functionality and lifespan. Budgeting for disaster response and recovery is improving; however, there are calls for more evidence to support budget allocations. This exploratory study aimed to create a systematic approach for integrating climate-related disaster risks within road asset evaluation, towards improving the evidence-base for capital works and maintenance budgets. It involved a systematic literature review of 63 research papers about resilient road infrastructure, followed by sense-checking key findings through eight semi-structured interviews with road asset management experts from the Australian government and industry. The authors present a set of 15 parameters for evaluating road infrastructure resilience, within four commonly used asset management categories: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness and rapidity. These are placed within a disaster management planning framework for resilient road infrastructure outcomes, with the key parameters matched to the commonly used disaster management phases of ‘Prevent, Prepare, Respond, Recover’. The parameters and the framework have immediate use for road infrastructure asset managers, providing clear decision-support regarding what data are important to collect and analyse and at what time, to inform capital works and maintenance budgets.