Resilience Management in Urban Transportation Systems

Within urban contexts, transport systems are today challenged to respond to a wide range of mobility needs, whilst coping with severe constraints of many different kinds, namely geographical, environmental, safety and security-related, among others. The Urban Transport System (UTS) is a relevant case of an interconnected system where critical infrastructure and multi decision makers (people, civil protection, public administration, etc.) are involved. Enhancing resilience in UTS is considered imperative for two main reasons: (a) such systems provide critical support to every socio-economic activity – while are themselves one of the most important economic sectors in Europe – and (b) the paths that convey people, goods and information, are the same through which risks are propagated. High variability and uncertainty must be taken into account as constant operational factors and the understanding of phenomena emerging from complex system interactions requires models and tools that go beyond current practices based on a linear cause-effect modelling of system operations. Taking into account these considerations, the RESOLUTE project aims at developing information and data management systems to provide improved support to systems operations under high variability and uncertainty conditions. Although UTS are used as specific case study, the development of overall valid resilience guidelines is one of the goal of RESOLUTE.