Resilience of Inland Transport Networks to Extreme Events

Dear Colleagues,

It is well known that modern society is becoming increasingly dependent on transportation networks for its daily activities. The ability of transport systems to operate during adverse conditions and quickly recover to acceptable levels of service after an extreme event occurs is fundamental to the wellbeing of citizens.

The transport sector is well aware of the increasing number of extreme events, which are mainly natural (where climate change plays an important role), but also manmade (e.g., accidents, negligence, vandalism, and terrorism). Therefore, actions are required to mitigate the impact of such situations. In recent years, strategies to reduce risk vulnerability and to strengthen network systems with respect to extreme events have increased in demand. Thus, the design, validation, and implementation of new holistic methods, strategies, and tools are needed for inland transport infrastructures to increase their resilience. In addition to the aforementioned threats, transport networks’ reliability is also limited by the condition of the infrastructure; however, risk management systems (RMS) rarely consider infrastructure preservation. Infrastructure management (IM) requires knowledge about the costs and effectiveness of medium- to long-term actions taking extreme natural and manmade events into account. In the short term, resilience is influenced by efficient recovery, which will depend on the incorporation of Big Data and smart ICT into emergency plans, as well as real-time, optimized communication with operators and end-users (via crowdsourcing and social media).

In this context, universities, private companies, transport operators, and public administrations are developing and validating new methods, tools, and strategies to build safer and more resilient infrastructures.

The goal of this Special Issue is to publish original technical and research papers focused on innovative methodologies and approaches to improve the resilience of transport infrastructures in their different dimensions, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Investigations focused on identification and mapping of extreme weather conditions that can anticipate the malfunctioning of terrestrial transport networks.
• Methodologies to better understand the magnitude of the consequences of extreme events for transport infrastructure.
• Technologies and methodologies for more efficient monitoring of infrastructure assets, including large-scale monitoring using remote sensing, contact sensors, connected vehicles, social media, infrastructure information modeling, etc.
• Structural health monitoring of infrastructure facilities and condition evaluation by using innovative methods.
• Development of predictive models for projecting risks of future infrastructure damage, shutdown, and deterioration.
• Optimization of decision support systems.
• New maintenance strategies.

Dr. Belén Riveiro
Dr. Carlos Perez-Collazo
Guest Editors

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