Emergence of resilience as a framework for state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in the United States

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-1-2020

Abstract

State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in the United States are responsible for a large portfolio of transportation modes and services, including passenger and freight systems. These responsibilities include operations under routine conditions and during incidents and events that result from various natural and human-caused hazards. During unexpected events, disruptions and reductions in service result in requiring the reallocation and reassignment of personnel, modal, and economic resources. To better prevent and respond to the effects of service disruptions, the concept of resilience has emerged as an important framework, within which, DOTs across the United States are using to plan for the occurrence of threats. In this paper, the key findings of recent reviews of literature and practice related to resilience among state DOTs in the United States are summarized. The review effort focused on a range of risks faced by transportation agencies including climate change, terrorism, cyber-attacks, and aging infrastructure and the ways in which DOTs are confronting them in practice. The topics of this paper range from the fundamental, including definitions of transportation resilience; to the more complex such as examinations of risk, vulnerability and threats; to the most sophisticated topics including administrative-level efforts to conceptualize evolving transportation planning and policies within a resilience framework.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment

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