Time-dependent resilience analysis of a road network in an extreme environment

Abstract

Road networks, especially those built in an extreme environment, are at risk of service failure after long-term exposure to various types of disruptive events. With growing costs of service failure, it has become increasingly important to evaluate the dynamic operability characteristics, i.e., the dynamic resilience, of road networks. However, existing studies in this field generally considered a one-time disaster event during a relatively short period, and thus became insufficient for assessing the resilience of road networks in an extreme environment with frequent disaster events. This paper aims to propose a Time-dependent Resilience Analysis Framework (TIDRAF) by modeling the dynamic resilience of a road network in an extreme environment (where there are frequent disruptive events) and sequential repair actions. The original resilience triangle diagram is extended into a long-term paradigm to fit the road network with its frequent-disaster environment. The road network in the Tibetan Plateau, which has for years severely suffered from frequent disaster events, was selected as the case to validate the proposed TIDRAF. Based on the results of the analysis, three optimization strategies are presented to improve the resilience of the network against failures.