Environmentally Influenced Risk and Sustainable Management of State Controlled Transportation Assets

Federal and state transportation agencies across the world face a multitude of challenges to effectively maintain cost-effective core maintenance programs for managing a safe, yet sustainable transportation assets’ program. The decision-making process involves several risk factors, and the prioritization of these factors could considerably affect both the level of utilization of these assets, as well as short- and long-term management protocols and plans for these agencies. The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act requires each state Department of Transportation in the United States to have a risk-based asset management plan in place to preserve the condition of their assets and improve the performance of the National Highway System. Many transportation agencies lack the financial and human resources to achieve their targets, and therefore they may opt to make trade-offs, lower targets, and perhaps drop some important objectives. Trade-off decisions can become clearer when objectives and targets are viewed through the lens of which options reduce the top-priority risks, such as reduced risk to safety, asset performance, or future costs. This chapter primarily focuses on emphasizing the importance of risk management in transportation networks and demonstrating the relationship between environmentally influenced risk management and sustainable management of state-controlled transportation assets in the United States. Several key parameters including risk assessment, financial risk and organizational behavior are addressed. Successful examples demonstrating how transportation agencies have identified how to best address a given risk, and in turn impact the resource allocation process are provided.

Transport Infrastructure Quality and Logistics Performance in Exports

The quality of transport infrastructure and the efficiency of logistics services enhance economic development. This study measures the effects of transport-freight common modals and logistics performance on the exports of goods in 29 developing economies based on micro fixed-effects panel data for the period 2012–2018. The endogenous model proved a positive relationship with countries’ outward orientation, highlighting the importance of transport infrastructure and logistics resources. The results revealed that the quality of roads and ports contribute significantly to higher exports in developing economies. However, the quality of airport infrastructure and logistics show a harmful effect. Notably, the logistics services level is a detrimental factor impacting the export of goods in developing economies. These results may adversely impact the potential contributions of other transport assets based on intermodal transport functionality and global market participation. Therefore, governments should prioritize formulating innovative policies and integration strategies with the private sector to improve the performance of logistics providers and fully utilize current transportation assets, particularly airports. These plans will facilitate higher exports, yield better development, and improve economic competitiveness while expanding export product diversification opportunities.

Highway Asset and Pavement Condition Management using Mobile Photogrammetry

Highway asset condition is of the utmost importance for transportation maintenance and pedestrian safety. Transportation facility managers must have up-to-date information on the status of all transportation assets to keep the transportation facilities operating at their highest level. Because of the sheer volume of transportation assets, an efficient and affordable data-collection procedure is necessary to gather the as-is status of the assets and create an asset inventory. Some pioneer departments of transportation in the United States use mobile Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to monitor highway assets and pavement condition data. Not only is the laser scanning equipment expensive, but the operator in charge of using the equipment must have special technical knowledge that may not be accessible to every individual. More recently, image-based reconstruction, known as photogrammetry, has emerged as a cheaper and simpler technology than LiDAR. Image-based 3D reconstruction can be done using a digital camera, such as a digital single-lens reflex camera or even a smartphone. This paper presents a full review of various research studies conducted on highway asset management and pavement condition assessment using spatial data modeling by the use of LiDAR and photogrammetry. This paper also presents two case studies to fill the current research gap in highway asset inventorying using photogrammetry. The results show the superiority of mobile LiDAR for highway asset inventorying and the possibility of having photogrammetry as a reliable alternative technology only in favorable illumination conditions.

Cost and Cost Politics in Airport Takeovers

While it is well known that cost is a politically salient issue, much less is known about the role of cost development and how costs get elevated into the political discussion. This chapter looks at the role of cost accounting and cost development in the recent takeover attempts of two airports by the state of North Carolina. The Charlotte-Douglas airport takeover was a failed attempt, and the Asheville Regional airport takeover succeeded. The chapter makes three important contributions to the study of sustainable transportation financial management. First, it shows that costs are important to the political discussion of the takeovers. Second, it provides a discussion of the relevant costs in each case. Third, it provides research on the political dimensions of cost in the United States in the management of transportation assets, which may limit sustainable transportation policy.

CLIMATE CHANGE VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR AMERICAN SAMOA: FOCUS ON TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Essential transportation infrastructure around the globe will be increasingly compromised by interrelated climate change impacts. Due to geographic isolation and limited natural resources, the economy and security of many Pacific territories and nations, including American Samoa, depend heavily on the resilience of these transportation infrastructure systems. Of particular relevance are the coastal impacts of climate changes such as sea level rise and storm surges which will threaten transportation infrastructure including both temporary and long-term flooding of airports, ports and harbors, and roads which are vital lifelines for trans-Pacific, interisland, and intra-island commerce and community services. The majority of the transportation assets in American Samoa are along a narrow coastal plain backed by steep topography, precluding relocation or retreat in response to increased coastal flooding accompanying a changing climate.Recorded Presentation from the vICCE (YouTube Link): https://youtu.be/k-qJPMVwvVc

Assessing transportation vulnerability to tsunamis: utilising post-event field data from the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami, Japan, and the 2015 Illapel tsunami, Chile

Transportation infrastructure is crucial to the operation of society, particularly during post-event response and recovery. Transportation assets, such as roads and bridges, can be exposed to tsunami impacts when near the coast. Using fragility functions in an impact assessment identifies potential tsunami effects to inform decisions on potential mitigation strategies. Such functions have not been available for transportation assets exposed to tsunami hazard in the past due to limited empirical datasets. This study provides a suite of observations on the influence of tsunami inundation depth, road-use type, culverts, inundation distance, debris and coastal topography. Fragility functions are developed for roads, considering inundation depth, road-use type, and coastal topography and, for bridges, considering only inundation depth above deck base height. Fragility functions are developed for roads and bridges through combined survey and remotely sensed data for the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Japan, and using post-event field survey data from the 2015 Illapel earthquake and tsunami, Chile. The fragility functions show a trend of lower tsunami vulnerability (through lower probabilities of reaching or exceeding a given damage level) for road-use categories of potentially higher construction standards. The topographic setting is also shown to affect the vulnerability of transportation assets in a tsunami, with coastal plains seeing higher initial vulnerability in some instances (e.g. for state roads with up to 5 m inundation depth) but with coastal valleys (in some locations exceeding 30 m inundation depth) seeing higher asset vulnerability overall. This study represents the first peer-reviewed example of empirical road and bridge fragility functions that consider a range of damage levels. This suite of synthesised functions is applicable to a variety of exposure and attribute types for use in global tsunami impact assessments to inform resilience and mitigation strategies.

Assessing Transportation Vulnerability to Tsunamis: Utilising Post-event Field Data from the 2011 Tohoku Tsunami, Japan, and the 2015 Illapel Tsunami, Chile

Transportation infrastructure is crucial to the operation of society, particularly during post-event response and recovery. Transportation assets, such as roads and bridges, can be exposed to tsunami impacts when near the coast. Using fragility functions in an impact assessment identifies potential tsunami effects to inform decisions on potential mitigation strategies. Such functions have not been available for transportation assets in the past due to limited empirical datasets. This study develops fragility functions for roads and bridges through combined survey and remotely sensed data for the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, Japan and using post-event field survey data from the 2015 Illapel Earthquake and Tsunami, Chile. The fragility functions show a trend of lower tsunami vulnerability (through lower probabilities of reaching or exceeding a given damage level) for road use categories of potentially higher construction standards. Topographic setting is also shown to affect the vulnerability of transportation assets in a tsunami with coastal plains seeing higher initial vulnerability (e.g. up to 5 m inundation depth), but coastal valleys exceeding the maximum vulnerability of roads on coastal plains (exceeding 30 m inundation depth). This study represents the first peer-reviewed example of empirical road and bridge fragility functions that consider a range of damage levels. This suite of synthesised functions is applicable to a variety of exposure and attribute types for use in global tsunami impact assessments, to inform resilience and mitigation strategies.

Research on Comprehensive Multi-Infrastructure Optimization in Transportation Asset Management: The Case of Roads and Bridges

Optimization is the core of transportation asset management, but current optimization approaches are still in the stage of single infrastructure management, which seriously hinders the development and application of transportation asset management. This paper establishes a comprehensive multi-infrastructure optimization model for transportation assets consisting of roads and bridges, which is aimed at achieving the goal of transportation asset comfort, integrity, and security, taking budget funds as constraint conditions, and applying the optimization technique of goal programming and integer programming. An interactive fuzzy linear-weighted optimum-order algorithm is presented to solve the comprehensive optimization model. Finally, the comprehensive multi-infrastructure optimization model and algorithm are verified to be effective by practical data in a case study. The results indicate that the model and algorithm can provide a satisfactory and reasonable maintenance and rehabilitation schedule for transportation asset management agencies.