Transportation Asset Risk and Resilience Analysis in Coastal Communities

Flood risk assessment for urban road infrastructure faces significant challenges, particularly due to the scarcity of historical inundation data and the computational inefficiencies of traditional hydrodynamic models. This study addresses these challenges by leveraging 592 modular 2D hydrodynamic flood simulations to assess both direct agency costs (infrastructure repair) and user costs (travel time delays) resulting from flood events. The methodology integrates hazard scenario generation, hazard-asset pairing, vulnerability assessment, and impact analysis to develop a holistic framework for flood risk and resilience assessment. Harris County, TX, a flood-prone region that includes the Houston metropolitan area, serves as the testbed for this analysis. High-resolution flood simulations are paired with geospatial road network data to estimate inundation depths and associated damages for over 21,000 road segments. Depth-damage functions are applied to quantify the direct economic costs of road infrastructure damage, while a transportation resilience model calculates the societal impacts in terms of travel time delays across flood scenarios. The results demonstrate that flood-induced infrastructure damage and travel disruptions exhibit spatial heterogeneity and nonlinear relationships with inundation depth, highlighting critical road segments that require targeted resilience interventions. By combining direct and societal costs into a unified monetary metric, this study provides stakeholders with a robust decision-support tool for prioritizing flood mitigation investments and enhancing urban resilience. The framework’s computational efficiency and scalability make it adaptable for application in other flood-prone regions, offering a valuable resource for policymakers, planners, and engineers.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $112500
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348330

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  Coastal Research and Transportation Education (CREATE) University Transportation Center

  Texas State University
  San Marcos, TX  United States  78666

  Texas A&M Research Foundation, College Station

  Texas A&M University
  College Station, TX  United States  77843
• Managing Organizations:

  Coastal Research and Transportation Education (CREATE) University Transportation Center

  Texas State University
  San Marcos, TX  United States  78666

  Texas A&M Research Foundation, College Station

  Texas A&M University
  College Station, TX  United States  77843
• Project Managers:

  Bruner, Britain

  Kulesza, Stacey

• Performing Organizations:

  Texas A&M University, College Station

  Zachry Department of Civil Engineering
  3136 TAMU
  College Station, TX  United States  77843-3136
• Principal Investigators:

  Mostafavi, Ali

• Start Date: 20230901
• Expected Completion Date: 20250228
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Asset management; Coasts; Disaster resilience; Equity; Risk analysis; Social impacts; Transportation planning; Weather and climate
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies; Society; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01895249
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Coastal Research and Transportation Education (CREATE) University Transportation Center
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348330
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Oct 3 2023 9:47PM