03 - What could be the impact of the research on infrastructure resilience?
Last September, I gave a short presentation about my research project ResilRoad (Risk-based Resilience indicators for Roadway networks) at the SMARTI Summer School 2018 in Palermo (Italy). Following my presentation, one of the questions from the audience was: What could be the impact of your research project? I thought that it could be interesting to share the answer to this question in today's post. I will more generally explore the possible contribution of research on infrastructure resilience to society.
Firstly, this question makes a lot of sense because my project is rather theoretical. The aim is to develop a methodology to asses road-network resilience, which is something that cannot be easily apprehended compared to research topics that focus on developing prototypes or performing laboratory tests.
The idea behind my project is that road networks (like any other engineering systems) have a property called resilience, which represents their ability to sustain, recover, and adapt to changing conditions. The term 'changing conditions' designates extreme weather events (e.g. floods, earthquakes), man-made events (e.g. serious car accidents, sabotage), and technical failures (e.g. bridge collapse).
Although it’s not possible to predict or avoid most of the events cited above, they can be managed and their impact on society can be reduced. The concept of resilience is hence derived into resilience-assessment methods that support strategic planning. In other words, policy-makers and infrastructure managers respectively want society and infrastructures to be resilient, so they need guidelines to understand - what resilience means? - how it can be measured? - and how it can be implemented?
The cost inccurred by non-resilient infrastructures
In practice, the consequences of having a non-resilient road transport network can be apprehended by its cost to society. The cost of repair works to damaged infrastructures is one of the costs incurred by extreme events. For example, the UK Department for Transport (2014) reported that the July 2007 flood led to repair costs for all roads of £40 to 60 million.
Beyond repair costs, congestion is also a concerning consequence of disruptive events According to the Conference of European Directors of Roads (2009), disruptive events are responsible for 10 to 25% of the congestion experienced in Europe and are the largest single cause of journey unreliability. So, how can we assess the cost of congestion to society? The costs of congestion include :
- direct costs: the value of fuel and time wasted
- indirect costs: the increased cost of doing business (delayed work trips and freight transport) transmitted to households in the form of higher prices for goods and services.
- environmental costs: the increased carbon footprint, emissions of greenhouse gas and pollutants due to vehicle idling, which leads to poorer air quality.
The role of research is to explore possible solutions
The knowledge derived from the research on resilience should allow road managers to assess the current resilience of infrastructures, compare alternative solutions for resilience implementation, and measure progress. For example, three strategies could improve road networks resilience:
- Increase the robustness of roads e.g. increase the structural reliability of bridges
- Increase the network redundancy e.g. build several roads so that different paths remain available if one road is blocked
- Prepare efficient traffic-incident-management processes that allow car accidents to be quickly cleared to reduce the consequences of the disruption over time.
Philippe S, ESR9