Road Network's Disaster Resilience Assessment Methodology

The paper presents a new methodology to evaluate functionality and resilience of a road network during extreme events such as earthquakes. A critical review of different existing indices that evaluate the performances of a road network is given, making a comparison between the indices and emphasizing their strengths and weaknesses with respect to the new proposed methodology. The main parameters are the interdependence between the road and building networks, the capacity to store vehicles in the road network, and the accessibility of the network from various traffic sources. The proposed methodology was implemented in software based on the PEOPLES framework. Finally, the proposed methodology has been tested using two case studies: (i) the transportation network of L'Aquila town subjected to the 2009 Italian earthquake; and (ii) the road network of Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay affected by an earthquake with a return period of 2450 yrs.