The Swedish Road Network – Vulnerable or not?

The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden KTH is in the finishing stages of a research project aiming to develop the methodology for vulnerability analysis of road networks that can be used for decision-making concerning investment and maintenance measures. At the forefront is Erik Jenelius, a young researcher and PhD-student, who is breaking new grounds in the way we should think about road vulnerability and how to mitigate it.

Vulnerability Analyses of Road Networks

There is an extensive list of publications and work reports on the project home page, well worth a read.

Indicators of the importance of a link and of the exposure of a region from a vulnerability perspective will be developed. A modelling tool will be developed by which these indicators can be calculated. An interface will be developed for the transference of data from other systems to this tool. A GIS-based tool will be developed for visualising the results. Specific vulnerability analyses will be carried out for different road regions in consultation with the Swedish Road Administration. These analyses will point out certain links as particularly important for the functioning of the network and certain municipalities as particularly exposed. The possibilities for the inclusion of vulnerability analyses in operation and maintenance planning and in investment planning will be studied.

Erik Jenelius

Erik Jenelius is the driving force behind the research. I happened to meet him at The NECTAR Cluster 1 Seminar, where he presented his research on transport network vulnerability, and where I presented my own paper on a similar topic, in which I referenced Jenelius, since he is one step ahead of my own research.



The increase in generalised travel costs weighted by the satisfied or unsatisfied demand when network links are closed is used as a measure of vulnerability for a case study in Northern Sweden, and applied to the terms of importance and exposure.  Together these measure provide substantial information to planners, road administrations and individual municipalities as to where the most vulnerable (exposed and or/important) links in the network are.

Erik has published a lot more since then, and it can all be found on the project homepage.

Reference

JENELIUS, E., PETERSEN, T., & MATTSSON, L. (2006). Importance and exposure in road network vulnerability analysis Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 40 (7), 537-560

Links

Related

Posted in THIS and THAT
Tags: , , , ,

ARTICLES and PAPERS
Estimation of disruption risk
How to estimate the disruption risk exposure in a supply chain? That is the question asked by Ulf Pa[...]
A typology of crises
What defines a crisis? Are there different types of crises? Crisis management is the focus of this w[...]
BOOKS and BOOK CHAPTERS
Book review: Handbook of Transportation Engineering
Comprehensive and all-encompassing, the Handbook of Transportation Engineering by Myer Kutz (editor)[...]
Supply Chain Risk - Jetzt auch auf Deutsch
Unbeknown to me - or perhaps I really should have known better - there appears to be a large body of[...]
REPORTS and WHITEPAPERS
The supply chain of the future
Many global supply chains are not equipped to cope with the world we are entering. Most were enginee[...]
Assess the vulnerability of your production system
So far I have reviewed "international" literature and web sites, and it is only fitting that now it [...]