Shantanu Kumar, MS and Mohammed S. Hashem M. Mehany, PhD., PMP
Colorado State University,
Fort Collins, Colorado
Limited financial resources and increased demand for transportation infrastructure maintenance and rehabilitation have complicated investment decision making in recent decades. Additionally, the cascading effects of disasters on critical infrastructure combined with insufficient funding for rehabilitation projects have intensified the situation. Meanwhile, infrastructure resiliency has emerged as a major solution to this problem and research efforts are currently implementing resilience concepts in current and future transportation infrastructure projects. Individual research studies have created models to assess investment decisions related to recovery and other facets of resilience (e.g., adaptability and robustness). However, most of these efforts have been fragmented and none have been applied on a standardized basis or been applicable to fit a standard system for infrastructure resiliency measures over different infrastructure projects (e.g. transportation) around the United States. This quantitative research builds on the Envision standardized rating system’s resilience section to explore the possibilities of investment decisions influenced by adopting different resilience strategies. The novel optimization model uses mathematical modeling to assess various combinations of resilience strategies under budget constraints to find an optimal solution. The model has been successful in providing results based on user-defined priorities for cost and resilience.
Key Words: Resilience, Optimization, Transportation, Investment