Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers (2021)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

93   The following pages reproduce excerpts from Understanding Transportation Resilience: A 2016–2018 Roadmap (Fletcher and Ekern 2017) that were provided as appendices with the dis- cussion papers that now make up Part 2 of this report. The excerpts provided useful context and continuity, linking the preceding work with the creation of the discussion papers. For readers’ convenience, the three appendices have been blended together into this document. Content that appeared in all three appendices has been merged into the first sections, followed by con- tent that appeared only in the appendix to the environmental discussion paper. Edits made to specific language as part of this consolidation are indicated either by brackets, where wording was adjusted, or by ellipses, where repeated content was moved or elided. A P P E N D I X B Excerpts from Understanding Transportation Resilience: A 2016–2018 Roadmap Introduction [Key findings from] the 2015 National Infrastructure Advisory Council report on the critical importance of transportation sector resilience. Key in their findings and recommendations were: • The importance of understanding the systemic risks causing system disruptions • Incorporating resilience into operational practice • Investing in resilient infrastructure • The importance of conducting a quadrennial review of transportation infrastructure • Developing tools, models, and standards to mitigate risks • Operationalizing resilience Defining Resilience As is common in new fields of endeavor or in the adaptation of one field of knowledge to another domain, developing a common language with well-understood meaning is problematic. The language of resilience is no different. Originally the term and its application were developed in Human Psychology and referred to the human trait of being able to “bounce back” or recover from illness, adversity, depression, and other life misfortunes.

94 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers These core notions were easily seen as analogs of desirable characteristics of governments, communities, and complex systems such as transportation. Consequently, various agencies began to define resilience in multiple, similar but not completely harmonious terms. • Presidential Policy Directive PPD21 defined resilience as “The ability to prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions. Resilience includes the ability to withstand and recover from deliberate attacks, accidents, or naturally occurring threats or incidents.” • DHS defines resilience variously as, “The ability to resist, absorb, recover from, or successfully adapt to adversity or a change in conditions,” and also, “The ability of systems, infrastructures, government, business, and citizenry to resist, absorb, recover from, or adapt to an adverse occurrence that may cause harm, destruction, or loss of national significance.” • The 2009 AASHTO-TRB Transportation Hazards & Security Summit proposed a comprehensive definition of Resilience: “The ability of a system to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service or functionality in the face of major shocks or disruptions to normal operations. o A system of systems characterization across “lifeline systems” including power, water, connectivity, and mobility with a focus on providing these essential services first. o Self-diagnosing, self-healing, and self-repairing systems that have fewer long-term service disruptions and lower life-cycle costs. o Systems that are sustainable, energy efficient and performance-based.” • AASHTO’s SCOTSEM defines resilience as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to adverse events” (adapted from DISASTER RESILIENCE: A NATIONAL IMPERATIVE, NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, 2012). • The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Resilient America Roundtable has also adopted the National Imperative definition of resilience as, “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to actual or potential adverse events.” • FHWA Order 5520 defines resilience or resiliency as, “. . . the ability to anticipate, prepare for and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to and recover rapidly from disruptions.” • The Harbor Safety Committee Conference defined resilience as “The capability to expeditiously recover and reconstitute vital services with minimum disruption.” • The non-partisan, not-for-profit Reform Institute suggested resilience was “Mitigating the cascading adverse effects of a terrorist attack or natural disaster so that the nation can quickly recover and resume normal activity after such an episode.” Other related ideas focus on the ability to adapt to the demands of stressful situations or to cope successfully with significant change, adversity, or difficulty.

Excerpts from Understanding Transportation Resilience: A 2016–2018 Roadmap 95   render such an activity moot. On the other hand, multiple applications of this ad hoc terminology may create the notion that “resilience” may be merely just the latest “buzz word” or initiative du jour. In other words, “Resilience is just (Emergency Management or System Operations or Infrastructure Protection or Transportation Security, etc.) with a new label.” The reality is that there is room and need for a “resilience” approach in all faces/scope and activities that are the responsibility of the transportation community. The Faces of Transportation System Resilience Resilience, much like safety, affects every major business function within a transportation agency, not just Operations. Planning, Design Engineering, Maintenance, and Business Management divisions all play significant roles. Table B-1 provides an example comparison among some of the more affected faces. Table B-1. Dimensioning the faces of resilience. It is well recognized in the transportation operations and emergency response community that the framework for its activities is driven by an understanding that there is a continuum to the events for which they need to plan, prepare, respond, and recover from. While a case can be made for standardizing on a single definition, the complexity of this undertaking coupled with the questionable benefits accompanying this ambition probably

96 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers The major take-away from this discussion is that, while state transportation agencies have significant roles to play in restoring transportation services and functions, in many cases they will not be the lead agency responsible and will need to closely coordinate, collaborate, and communicate with others. From the DOT's perspective, there are three distinct viewpoints: planning (climate change/ sustainability), engineering (infrastructure protection), and operations (traffic management/emergency management/security); three strategic levers: policy, people, and programs; with two different focuses: system and infrastructure component; and two different periods of research interest: pre-event (risk reduction) and post-event (consequence reduction). [The remaining pages reproduce content that appeared only in the appendix to the environmental discussion paper. Ellipses indicate where overlapping content was moved to merge it with the related content that appears in the first pages of this appendix.] The transportation community is engaged in a conversation focused on characterizing a new challenge facing the nation’s transportation systems. In numerous venues, the nexus of preparing for the impacts of climate change while responding to the catalog of system vulnerabilities and emergencies has emerged to be characterized as the RESILIENCE1 of the system. Although significant public and private sector efforts have been made to improve transportation system operations over the past decade, the 2013 TRB Report on Critical Issues in Transportation concluded that “[T]he performance of the transportation system is neither reliable nor resilient, yet transportation’s role in economic revival and in global economic competition has never been more important.” This finding was echoed by AASHTO’s Standing Committee on Research (SCOR) who noted that “A major performance issue across all modes is the “The transportation system is a complex network of infrastructure, vehicles, power sources, communications, and human capital. When we speak of resilience in the transportation sense, we mean the ability of the transportation system to recover and regain functionality after a major disruption or disaster.” AASHTO SCOR, 2016

Excerpts from Understanding Transportation Resilience: A 2016–2018 Roadmap 97   inadequacy of preparation for natural and human-made disasters” when it identified resilience as the number one NCHRP Emphasis Area for FY2017. . . . SCOR also noted that the application of resiliency engineering in the transportation sector is still in its infancy. This finding is echoed by the U.S. DOT, the National Research Council, AASHTO’s Special Committee on Transportation Security and Emergency Management (SCOTSEM), and others who have all indicated the need for more work to be done in implementing systematic resilience- based approaches in surface transportation. Although TRB cooperative research projects have produced a wealth of resilience-related studies, products, guidelines and effective practices, there is still much that remains to be done to ensure resilience becomes a sector wide goal co- equal with those established for safety, mobility, and efficiency. The Faces of Transportation System Resilience The parable of [the blind men and the elephant] teaches that along with the local bias of experience, there is some truth to every position. Each cell of the “honeycomb” shown in Figure 1 represents some face of resilience but, is not, by itself the whole. For example, while emergency management is an essential component of resilience, its conceptual framework is ill- suited for the kinds of actions necessary to mitigate or adapt to slow disruptors such as climate change. Some disruptions are known well in advance and can be planned for in great detail; others occur with no warning and require a great deal of resourcefulness to restore service. Resilience, much like safety, affects every major business function within a transportation agency, not just Operations. Planning, Design Engineering, Maintenance, and Business Management divisions all play significant roles. . . . [Figure B-1 and Figure B-2] illustrate that continuum. . . . Figure B-1. The transportation resilience honeycomb.

98 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers The Roles of Security, Emergency Management, and Infrastructure Protection in Transportation Resilience Over the course of time there have emerged a set of eight strategies that are recognized as effective methods of improving the resilience of many areas of service delivery. These well-understood strategies employed by the emergency management and security communities may share a common thread across all faces of resilience. The eight strategies are defined in Table [2]. Figure B-2. Resilience continuums.

Excerpts from Understanding Transportation Resilience: A 2016–2018 Roadmap 99   Table B-2. Strategies to achieve resilience. STRATEGY KEY DEFINITION Add Redundancy Adding redundancies to the asset or system can improve resilience by being able to reroute production or process flows through one or more parallel components or subsystems. Backup Components Having back-up components available can also improve resilience by being able to quickly replace a component or asset whose function is disrupted. Substitution Substitution can improve resilience by allowing a process to switch from one input or component to another, perhaps with slightly different properties but without major impact on the final product or process. Reduce Vulnerabilities Products and processes can also be redesigned to reduce or eliminate their vulnerabilities to specific threats. Improvise Approaches Resilience may also depend on the ability to improvise during a disruptive event, perhaps by re-engineering processes in real time or making do with materials and assets at hand. Priority Access The resilience of a critical infrastructure asset could also be enhanced by giving it priority access to critical resources, thereby maintaining its services or getting services back on-line more quickly to aid in a more general community recovery. Model Disruptions Many discussions regarding resilience of critical infrastructure stress the importance of modeling system operations, including the system’s interdependencies with other systems beyond the immediate control of operators, assessing vulnerabilities, and contingency planning. Backup Logistics Planning (preparedness) is particularly important if one is using back- up systems or substitution to help respond to events.