Tag Archives: transport vulnerability

Transportation reliability and vulnerability

Revised on: 2015-09-04

This is a philosophical essay on transportation vulnerability, where three fields or subjects are brought together : engineering (reliability and vulnerability), economics (cost and benefits) and politics (decision making). The idea behind the research is to blend statistical, economical and political arguments in order to achieve a novel and unifying framework for decision making within transportation planning. By adding reliability and vulnerability to the traditional equations of costs and benefits it is hoped that transportation planners and professionals will not only consider economical arguments, but also dare to take on political statements that may be in opposition to strictly factual costs and benefits.

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Er rassikring lønnsomt?

Revised on: 2011-05-27

Rassikring av veger har en klar samfunnsøkonomisk nytteverdi, men hvor stor er den? De største gevinstene er knyttet til å unngå omkjøring, skape trygghet og redusere antall ulykker. Hvordan måler man dette i kroner? Spørsmålet er viktig og angår mange lokalsamfunn i dette fylket. Analyser viser at selve omkjøringskostnadene kan variere fra drøyt 200 kr/time og opp til 80.000 kr/time, avhengig av sted, trafikkmengde, trafikksammensetning og omkjøringsmuligheter.

(ved Svein Bråthen, Jan Husdal og Jens Rekdal, Høgskolen i Molde og Møreforsking Molde)

Denne kronikken stod på trykk i Romsdals Budstikke 24.11.2008 og det er gjort mindre justeringer i teksten for å tilpasse den til denne bloggen.

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When disaster strikes…

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Revised on: 2011-03-10

…how does the transportation network recover? And why are transportation networks so essential to disaster recovery? Ho do effective transportation networks contribute to the recovery effort? Is recovery even possible without a functioning transportation network? This was the topic of a session I attended at TRB 2009 this week. Although this session was mainly aimed at US transportation agencies, the introduction to the panel discussion had some key points I would like to reiterate here.

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Supply Chain Disruptions – Does Location Matter?

Revised on: 2011-08-03

How are companies located in sparse transport networks affected by supply chain disruptions? Here is a copy of the paper I presented at TRB2009, the Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC, 11-15 January 2009. The paper was presented in a poster session and included as a full paper in the conference proceedings. For your convenience, both the paper and the poster are included below.

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Airports – vital to supply chains?

Revised on: 2011-03-29

Is the temporary shut-down of Bangkok’s two international airports important in a supply chain perspective? So far, the issue has been stranded tourists, maybe as many as 100000. Now it’s also becoming a major headache for the tourist industry and subsequently for Thailand’s national economy, loosing as much as $85 million per day, according to the BBC News. Not only that, air freight will also be impacted, but why is this important?
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TRB 2009 – are you going there, too?

Revised on: 2011-03-29

Are you presenting at the TRB 2009, the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting? Personally I consider presenting an article at TRB as only inches away from having an article published in an academic journal. The reason is that you have to submit a full paper, not just an abstract, which is then fully peer reviewed by at least three referees, thus ensuring the quality of the paper. Below is the abstract of a paper I will present at TRB2009, the Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC, 11-15 January 2009.

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Sparse transportation networks – a nightmare

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Revised on: 2015-09-09

Now it has happened again. Hardly a week goes by in Norway without a major supply chain disruption. Now the main (and practically only) highway beween the Northern and Southern part of Norway has been interrupted, prompting long detours on smaller roads. Not only that, the in fact only rail line between Trondheim and Bodø has been interrupted as well, a rail line that transports much of the goods between North and South Norway and is a major freight corridor. Normally, eight large freight trains pass every day. The irony is that this happened during construction work aimed at improving said road. In fact, this is the second time this year; in June the road and rail were closed for 12 days. This time, it’s looking like a couple of WEEKS!

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International Transport Economics Conference 2009

Revised on: 2015-11-17

If you haven’t already done so, make sure to bookmark this conference in your calendar. The International Transport Economics Conference (ITrEC) 2009 will be held during June 15-16, 2009, at the University of Minnesota. ITrEC brings together researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers interested in all questions of transport economics. Topics include economic questions relating to revenue and finance; congestion, pricing, and investment; production and cost estimation; transport demand; energy and environment; safety; institutions and industrial organization; and transport and land use. The conference is designed to appeal to participants from varied backgrounds, including economists and transport professionals in particular.

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Sparse transportation networks and disruptions

Revised on: 2011-08-03

The vulnerability of the transportation network as part of the supply chain is of particular interest in countries or regions with sparsely populated areas, and hence, a sparse transportation network. Typically traits of such regions are few transportation mode options and/or few transportation link options for each transportation mode, for example maybe only one railway line and two roads, no port, no airport. It should not come as a surprise then that the nature of sparse transportation networks, and thus sparse supply chains, makes them vulnerable to many different kinds of internal and external risks.

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Norwegian roads are dangerous!

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Revised on: 2015-09-10

I just learned from the news this evening, while writing on a rather dull post for this blog, that a rockfall has hit one of major roads in this region, Rv 70 in Sunndal. Rockfall is not an unknown event in Norway, especially not in this region, where roads undulate precariously along high mountains, and where the only “escape” is a dive into freezing cold waters. The road in question has a long history of rockfalls and the incident has cut off the most direct route between the coastal city of Kristiansund and Eastern Norway, but fortunately a detour route is available. In Norway’s sparse transportation network that is not always the case, and closed roads mean additional travel costs not only to the ordinary traveller (i.e. tourist), but most importantly to businesses, who then have no alternative for shipping their goods to their customers, or receiving their goods from their suppliers.

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Accessibility Index – Transport Network Vulnerability

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

I had the pleasure of meeting M.A.P. Taylor at the 3rd International Symposium on Transport Network Vulnerability (INSTR 2007). His research has many bearings towards my own research in that it is concerned with transport network vulnerability in sparse rural and remote networks. In his 2006 paper, Application of Accessibility Based Methods for Vulnerability Analysis of Strategic Road Networks, Taylor and his fellow contributors develop a methodology for assessing the socio-economic impacts of transport network degradation by using the change in accessibility prior to and after degradation of the road network as a measure for the importance or criticality of the road link.

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Cutting back on road spending may not be wise

Revised on: 2011-08-03

In an article today, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet revealed that Statens Vegvesen (or the Norwegian Public Road Administration in English), which oversees the planning, construction and operation of the national and county road networks, is going to make major cuts to their budget, thus halting or severely delaying major infrastructure projects.

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A lesson in supply chain disruption: German railways during WWII

Revised on: 2015-09-10

Now this may seem totally off topic, but I have become so engrossed with modern-day supply chains that I have forgotten that supply chain disruptions have occurred as frequently in the past as today, and particular within the military in war times. A supply chain serving a war machine is under extreme strain, but is an essential element in winning or losing not only a battle or two, but an entire war.

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Will Climate Change have an impact on transportation?

Revised on: 2011-05-30

Many studies have already examined the potential impacts of climate change on broad sectors of the economy, such as agriculture and forestry, but only a handful have studied the impacts on transportation. Transportation professionals should look into the challenges posed by climate change and incorporate current scientific knowledge into the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems. Obviously, the primary focus of this study is on the consequences of climate change for U.S. transportation infrastructure and operations, but many – if not most – of the conclusion are just as applicable anywhere else in the world
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Oslo airport shut-down…lessons learned?

Revised on: 2015-09-09

Two days ago, Norway’s major airport, Oslo Gardermoen (OSL) practically shut down due to weather conditions, so-called “freezing fog”. The usual rate of 32 take-offs per hour was reduced to 10 (at the best) and tens of thousands of Christmas travelers were stranded for up to more than 24 hours on what is probably THE busiest day of the year. What acerbated things was how the airlines dealt with the situation: No information to waiting passengers, no food coupons or refreshments, endless lines in front of ticket counters…

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The Swedish Road Network – Vulnerable or not?

Revised on: 2015-09-09

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.

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How New Zealand develops resilient organisations

Revised on: 2015-09-09

Is New Zealand better prepared for a disaster than other countries? As our infrastructure and organizations become ever more networked and interdependent there is a growing need to focus on managing overall system risk. In particular, there is a need to focus not only on the vulnerability of our systems to failure, but also on our ability to manage and minimize the impact of any failures. New Zealand has realized this and is currently halfway through a six year research project designed to assist organizations in recovering their economic competitiveness after hazard events.

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Is Your Supply Chain Vulnerable?

Revised on: 2011-03-10

Recently I came across a report on Supply Chain Vulnerability published as early as 2002 by the Cranfield University School of Management on behalf of the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Home Office. The key findings from this research report into supply chain vulnerabilities are quite interesting.

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Cost-Benefit Analysis – an essay about valuation problems

Revised on: 2011-07-21

This paper introduces vulnerability as an important parameter for decision-support in cost-benefit analyses for transportation projects, by seeking to establish a link between the terms reliability and vulnerability vis-à-vis costs and benefits. The paper contends that a reliable transportation network represents a net benefit to society, and conversely, that a vulnerable network represents a net cost to society. Vulnerability costs or disruption costs are related to both location on and usage of the transportation network, and methods to explore these costs are suggested.

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Transport Network Vulnerability Metrics

Revised on: 2015-09-05

Transport network vulnerability is a relatively new field of research and to this date no commonly agreed definition or quantifiable expression of what vulnerability is exists within the academic community. The following paper presents a review of road network vulnerability, seeking to synthesize different terminologies and metrics, among which: reliability, vulnerability, resilience, flexibility, robustness, and adaptive capacity.

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