The Impact of Increased Adverse Weather Events on Freight Movement

With significant increases in freight volumes, the impacts from severe weather events to port truck traffic may cause an economic loss in Texas and the surrounding region. Although adverse weather events significantly impact transportation infrastructure and networks, a lack of understanding on the scope and magnitude of a weather event’s impact on freight movement persists. This project aims to characterize the port truck movements by identifying operational patterns by associated industry and service types and evaluate system response during adverse weather events. The research will focus on identifying (1) truck activity from the port of Houston, (2) capturing truck flow disruptions due to Hurricane Harvey, and (3) identifying flow changes and recovery process during and immediately after the adverse events. Large-sized global positioning system (GPS) data will be used to represent individual trip characteristics such as travel time, origin-destination (OD), major route choice, and industry type. The developed framework will be applied in Houston as the major destination (or origin) of freight or the intermodal point of the shipment. Identified truck flows will be categorized by their service (trip) type (i.e., intercity, first or last mile trip, or localized service). Major trip origins and destinations will be matched with the associated industry using geographic information system (GIS) programming. Flow disruptions and activity changes will be investigated before and after the Hurricane Harvey to understand the interactions of truck behavior to the flow disruptions due to flooding. Operational strategies before the event and behavior changes during the event such as re-routing, shifting schedules or mode changes will be classified by the truck service (trip).

• Record URL:
  https://transet.lsu.edu/research-in-progress/
• Supplemental Notes:
  • 19ITSUTA02

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $110000
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747106

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Transportation Consortium of South-Central States (Tran-SET)

  Louisiana State University
  Baton Rouge, LA  United States  70803
• Project Managers:

  Melson, Christopher

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Texas at Arlington

  Department of Civil Engineering
  Box 19308
  Arlington, TX  United States  76019
• Principal Investigators:

  Hyun, Kate

  Mattingly, Stephen

• Start Date: 20190815
• Expected Completion Date: 20210215
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Before and after studies; Floods; Freight traffic; Geographic information systems; Global Positioning System; Impacts; Origin and destination; Ports; Service disruption; Traffic flow; Truck traffic; Weather conditions
• Identifier Terms: Hurricane Harvey, 2017; Port of Houston
• Geographic Terms: Texas
• Subject Areas: Freight Transportation; Highways; Motor Carriers; Operations and Traffic Management; Security and Emergencies; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01713580
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Consortium of South-Central States (Tran-SET)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747106
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Aug 8 2019 7:52AM