Special Issue "The Impact of Natural Hazards on Transport"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Marta Borowska-Stefańska
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of the Built Environment and Spatial Policy, University of Lodz, 90-142 Łódź, Poland
Interests: impact of natural hazards on transport; flood hazard; risk management; flood risk; GIS; daily mobility; evacuation planning
Dr. Szymon Wiśniewski
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of the Built Environment and Spatial Policy, University of Lodz, 90-142 Łódź, Poland
Interests: planning and development of transport infrastructure; transport geography; the impact of natural hazards on transport; city logistics; accessibility; mobility; intelligent transport systems
Mr. Michał Kowalski
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institute of the Built Environment and Spatial Policy, University of Lodz, 90-142 Łódź, Poland
Interests: transport geography; relationships between mobility and accessibility; vehicle speed modelling; the balance of transport systems in a changing environment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are organizing a Special Issue in Sustainability on “The Impact of Natural Hazards on Transport”. The venue is a peer-reviewed open access journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of sustainability. For detailed information on the journal, we refer you to https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability.

The number of natural disasters across the world is growing. Not only do such phenomena generate massive financial costs (destruction of buildings, roads, bridges, etc.), but they also pose a real threat to life. Transport systems play a critical role for the society, but they still remain susceptible to hazards, which makes it absolutely vital to comprehend the consequences of disturbances to the network as it enables us to manage the risk related to natural disasters. Transport disruption is an umbrella term for the probability of occurrence and resultant negative effect, from the occasional minor collision to less likely but major failures (e.g., of bridges), which may have extremely serious consequences.

In this Special Issue, we intend to address the vulnerability of transport infrastructure to hazards; the susceptibility, reliability, and resilience of transport systems; and evacuation from hazard areas. Filling this research gap of quantitative methods which cover the impact of non-typical events on transport will be a valuable asset to scientific development. The current state of knowledge on the matter is limited due to a shortage of analyses, models, empirical data, and tools that facilitate decision-making processes. Assessment of the impact natural hazards have on transport may help us to manage transport systems more effectively, and in consequence, minimize the impact itself.

We therefore wish to bring together distinguished researchers from a variety of academic backgrounds with the aim of presenting recent advances in this emerging field.

In this Special Issue, we invite original articles that focus on the impact of natural hazards on transport. Papers may cover topics including but not limited to:

  • Studies of infrastructural susceptibility, vulnerability, reliability, and resilience to hazards (including earthquakes, floods, fires, mass wasting, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.);
  • Analyses of the impact evacuation processes have on transport systems;
  • Research (including ex ante and ex post evaluations) of people’s behavior during evacuation;
  • Analyses related to the optimization of evacuation;
  • Analyses concerning the accessibility of rescue services to natural hazard sites;
  • Analyses of changes in mobility during the occurrence of non-typical events (natural disasters).

We welcome systematic reviews, research articles, empirical cases, and case studies. Studies on the impact of natural hazards on transport and methodological challenges are also welcome. If you are uncertain about whether your paper fits into the scope of this Special Issue, please contact the Guest Editors.

This Special Issue is open to any subject area related to impact of natural hazards on transport. The listed keywords suggest just a few of the many possibilities.

Dr. Marta Borowska-Stefańska
Dr. Szymon Wiśniewski
Mr. Michał Kowalski
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • natural hazards
  • transport
  • evacuation
  • susceptibility
  • resilience
  • vulnerability
  • reliability
  • accessibility
  • weather phenomena
  • risk management

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Dynamic Decision-Making Process of Evacuees during Post-Earthquake Evacuation near an Automatic Flap Barrier Gate System: A Broken Windows Perspective
Sustainability 2021, 13(16), 8771; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13168771 - 05 Aug 2021
Viewed by 310
Abstract
The automatic flap barrier gate system (AFBGS) plays a critical role in building security, but it is more vulnerable to natural hazards than common exits (including power failure, due to earthquakes, and delayed evacuation, due to safety certification, etc.). This article considers a [...] Read more.
The automatic flap barrier gate system (AFBGS) plays a critical role in building security, but it is more vulnerable to natural hazards than common exits (including power failure, due to earthquakes, and delayed evacuation, due to safety certification, etc.). This article considers a dynamic decision-making process of evacuees during post-earthquake evacuation near an AFBGS. An interesting metaphor, broken windows (BW), is utilized to interpret people’s actual behavior during evacuation. A multi-stage decision-making mechanism of evacuees is developed to characterize the instantaneous transition among three defined stages: Habitual, mild, and radical states. Then, we build a modified three-layer social force model to reproduce the interaction between evacuees based on an actual post-earthquake evacuation. The simulations reveal that BW provides a contextualized understanding of emergency evacuation with a similar effect to the traditional metaphor. An earlier appearance of a mild rule breaker leads to a higher crowd evacuation efficiency. If evacuees maintain the state of broken windows behavior (BWB), the crowd evacuation efficiency can be improved significantly. Contrary to the criminological interpretation, the overall effect of mild BWB is positive, but the radical BWB is encouraged under the command of guiders. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Impact of Natural Hazards on Transport)
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