Identification and Evaluation of Critical Transportation Infrastructure Resilience after Hydro-Meteorological Event
Abstract
Modern civilization is dependent on essential infrastructure assets that allow society to function in today’s standards. Critical interdependent infrastructure such as transportation, communication, security, and public health are marvels of human innovation and an important aspect of civilization's evolution. Recent world events such as climate change have underlined the necessity to develop strategic plans to enhance the resilience of infrastructure. This study aimed to identify and evaluate the flooding potential of critical transportation infrastructure that will influence traffic flow and impact the economy. The technical workflow is based on observations, predictions, experiments, testing, and analysis to derive a resilience score for decision making. To achieve the objectives of this study, critical transportation links in El Paso, Texas, were selected and analyzed to identify the extent of inundation due to an extreme rainstorm event, using various commercially available software. Using these software and available GIS data obtained from relative web sources, numerous inundation simulations were modeled to properly analyze the drainage performance of this critical transportation infrastructure during a 100-and-500-year frequency storm lasting 24 hours. The simulation results were analyzed and evaluated for resilience assessment, giving the critical transportation infrastructure a technical resilience score and suggested actions to improve efficient recovery of the system during a high intensity storm. This resilience assessment and score can help in planning and preventing critical transportation infrastructure failure by proposing a workflow for local, state, and federal agencies to develop an approach to improved drainage on critical transportation infrastructure or by mitigating the transition of traffic flow if a busy highway system is shut down due to flooding.
Subject Area
Hydrologic sciences|Hydraulic engineering|Transportation
Recommended Citation
Serrato, Herman, "Identification and Evaluation of Critical Transportation Infrastructure Resilience after Hydro-Meteorological Event" (2021). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI28869578.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI28869578