BACKGROUND
State transportation agencies have increased their focus on resilience as a key solution to the impacts of short-term events and long-term stressors, including climate change. The frequency and severity of damaging weather events, sea level rise, wildfires, and other climate impacts are forcing state governments to seek more long-term solutions. Economic shifts, demographic changes, and other disruptions also cause transportation agencies to modify their practices to accommodate uncertainty. They may be asked to justify additional project expenses in order to increase resilience. In turn, investing in resilience may reduce long-term transportation costs and disruptions. State departments of transportation (DOTs) need tools and approaches to track resilience efforts, investments, and progress toward improving resilience of the transportation system. There is no commonly acceptable standard for tracking goals, effectiveness, and outcomes of resilience efforts. Recent research does not provide a comprehensive approach to evaluate the effectiveness of policies, programs, project implementation, and other resilience actions from state transportation agencies. Having a consistent set of performance measures will accelerate the cost-effective use of funds and the incorporation of resilience into standard practices and programming.
OBJECTIVES
The objectives of this research are to: (1) identify or develop key resilience performance measures for state transportation agencies for roadway transportation systems for various classes of assets (e.g., bridges, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), pavement, culverts); (2) develop an approach that uses performance measures to assess the effectiveness of resilience strategies; and (3) develop a guide to aid state transportation agency practitioners in applying resilience performance measures.
RESEARCH PLAN
The research plan should: (1) include a kick-off teleconference with the research team and NCHRP convened within 1 month of the contract’s execution; (2) address the manner in which the proposer intends to satisfy the project objectives; (3) be divided logically into detailed tasks that are necessary to fulfill the research objectives and include appropriate milestones and interim deliverables; (4) include one face-to-face meeting to review an Interim Report, and a web-conference meeting (NCHRP will provide teleconference services); and (5) incorporate opportunities for the project panel to review, comment, and approve milestone deliverables.
In developing the research approach, consideration should be given, but not limited to the following concepts.
- Successful resilience practices currently used by transportation agencies for various climate related system stressors (e.g., storm surge, sea level rise, extreme precipitation/flooding, erosion, extreme heat, wild fires).
- Various classes of roadway assets (e.g., bridges, ITS, pavement, culverts) that state transportation agencies should consider when they measure system resilience.
- Key performance measures and metrics related to resilience for the various asset classes and roadway transportation system with consideration for equity.
- Potential and existing data sources reasonably available to state transportation agencies for use in developing resilience measures and metrics. The limitations of using other data sources for transportation should also be considered.
Final deliverables will include (1) a final report documenting the entire research effort; (2) a practitioner’s guide that identifies data sources and resilience metrics for the various transportation asset classes relevant in measuring system resilience; (3) prioritized recommendations for future research; (4) a PowerPointTM presentation describing the background, objectives, research approach, findings, and conclusions; (5) a stand-alone technical memorandum titled “Implementation of Research Findings and Products”; (6) a presentation of findings to two AASHTO committees or councils concerned with transportation resilience; and (7) a draft article suitable for publication in TR News (information regarding TR News publication may be found on the TRB webpage https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/trnews/info4contributors.pdf).
STATUS: Research in progress.
