A swift approach for identifying vulnerable linear transport infrastructures in areas prone to floods and erosion

Linear transport infrastructures are essential for the socio-economic development of industrialized countries. However, adverse meteorological and hydrogeological events can result in significant economic losses.Globally, floods have the most substantial socio-economic impact. Climate Change, due to the extent of transport infrastructures over flood-prone territories, is a very important factor in worsening flood risk.The main objective of this study is to identify the sections of the hydrographic network that are susceptible to flood and erosion hazards where road infrastructures are located. The Metropolitan City of Cagliari (Sardinia, Italy) is selected as test site, due to the presence of several coastal watersheds and of a high population density.A swift methodological approach, based on already available datasets from public repositories and GIS analyses, is presented. This approach includes: i) geomorphological characterization of the hydrographic network; ii) census of stream tracts where bridges were damaged in past flood events; iii) identification of potentially critical tracts (PCT), based on similar geomorphological conditions; iv) multi-temporal satellite imagery analysis of PCT for the identification of flood-prone areas and, therefore, vulnerable road crossings.The adopted methodology has proved to be effective for the identification of vulnerable road crossings over wide portion of territories, identifying critical sites that need further investigation

Promoting Resiliency in Emergency Communication Networks: A Network Interdiction Stylized Initial Case Study Model of a Miami-Dade County Network

Police, fire, and emergency personnel rely on wireless networks to serve the public. Whether it is during a natural disaster, or just an ordinary calendar day, wireless nodes of varying types form the infrastructure that local, regional, and even national scale agencies use to communicate while keeping the population served safe and secure. We present a network interdiction modeling approach that can be utilized for analyzing vulnerabilities in public service wireless networks subject to hacking, terrorism, or destruction from natural disasters. We develop a case study for the wireless network utilized by the sheriff’s department of Miami-Dade County in Florida in the United States. Our modeling approach, given theoretical budgets for the “hardening” of wireless network nodes and for would-be destroyers of such nodes, highlights parts of the network where further investment may prevent damage and loss of capacity

The Impacts of Increased Adverse Weather Events on Freight Movement

Freight transportation is a major economic backbone of the United States and is vital to sustaining the nation’s economic growth. Ports, as one of the primary components of freight transportation and important means of integrating into the global economic system, have experienced significant growth and increased capacity during the past two decades. The study addresses an important national freight mobility goal to enhance the resilience of the port transportation operations in the event of extreme weather events. This study develops an adaptable resilience assessment framework that evaluates the impact of a disruptive event on transportation operations. The framework identifies dynamic performance levels over an extended period of an event including five distinct phases of responses- staging, reduction, peak, restoration, and overloading. This study applies the framework to the port complex in Houston, Texas, during a major hurricane event, Harvey, and two holiday events in 2017. The framework evaluates proactive and reactive responses of port truck activities during the disruptions and provides a comprehensive assessment of resilience and adaptability in port truck operations. Evaluating response systems and resilience of port truck activities during severe weather events such as Hurricane Harvey represents the first step for designing plans that support a fast system recovery that minimizes the economic, social, and human impacts

A resiliency framework for planning in state transportation agencies

This thesis presents a framework for resiliency planning in state departments of transportation and other transportation agencies. The development of this framework is motivated by the need for more resilient transportation systems, due of the increasing frequency and the effect both natural and man-made catastrophic disasters have on transportation systems. The resiliency framework is based on the urban transportation planning framework and is thus applied in the broader context of general transportation planning. The resiliency framework is then applied in a preliminary review to three statewide transportation plans to show the resiliency deficiencies of those plans and how the framework may be applied to increase resiliency. These plans are selected from three different states with diversity of locations and without any preconceived notions about their incorporation of resiliency in their planning process. This preliminary review reveals a reactive nature towards investments that increase an agency’s resilience. This may be attributed to the problem of limited funding for transportation investments, as well as, limited knowledge by the transportation agencies about the return on such resiliency investments, mostly due to the uncertainty associated with the occurrence of catastrophic disasters, especially the predictability of weather-related events. However, post-disaster transportation system overhauls provide enough evidence for the need for more systemic ways of addressing resiliency in planning processes.M.S

Disaster management from a POM perspective : mapping a new domain

We have reviewed disaster management research papers published in major operations management, management science, operations research, supply chain management and transportation/ logistics journals. In reviewing these papers our objective is to assess and present the macro level “architectural blue print” of disaster management research with the hope that it will attract new researchers and motivate established researchers to contribute to this important field. The secondary objective is to bring this disaster research to the attention of disaster administrators so that disasters are managed more efficiently and more effectively. We have mapped the disaster management research on the following five attributes of a disaster: (1) Disaster Management Function (decision making process, prevention and mitigation, evacuation, humanitarian logistics, casualty management, and recovery and restoration), (2) Time of Disaster (before, during and after), (3) Type of Disaster (accidents, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides, terrorism and wildfires etc.), (4) Data Type (Field and Archival data, Real data and Hypothetical data), and (5) Data Analysis Technique (bidding models, decision analysis, expert systems, fuzzy system analysis, game theory, heuristics, mathematical programming, network flow models, queuing theory, simulation and statistical analysis). We have done cross tabulations of data among these five parameters to gain greater insights in disaster research. Recommendations for future research are provided

Modeling wetland connectivity and vulnerability to wetland-corridor loss

Title from PDF of title page; abstract from research PDF (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on June 20, 2014).Wetland systems involve a complex range of important biological, chemical, and hydrologic interactions among individual wetlands which contribute to ecological health. Modification of the landscape due to anthropogenic development has a direct impact on the connectivity supporting these interactions as well as the ecology of a region. It is thus important for individuals and agencies involved in the management and protection of wetland systems to understand the baseline condition of wetlands, supported interactions, and how potential land use and infrastructure modifications may change the strength of underlying connectivity. This baseline connectivity should, therefore, be rigorously defined, accommodating considerations of different types of connectivity and measurement systems. To better understand these issues, a framework is proposed for representing and reasoning about the connectivity of aquatic resources. In particular, a corridor-based representation of connectivity and network-based optimization methods have been developed and implemented in a geographic information system to establish a baseline level of connectivity and to model the effect of potential landscape changes. The developed framework is applied to a wetland system in Missouri to demonstrate the tradeoff between proposed mitigation options and ease of ensuring sustained system connectivity. More broadly, this type of connectivity analysis can be used to inform many types of planning decisions such as those considering alternative courses of development, prioritization of wetland management/protection resources as well as those addressing policy or regulatory matters