Disaster resilience of transportation infrastructure and ports – An overview

Contemporary literature on disaster resilience of transportation infrastructure and seaports is reviewed. There is a considerable body of literature on disaster resilience in terms of engineering and technical resilience of infrastructure to disasters. Resilience of communities is also a subject of wide research. The impact of disasters on transportation infrastructure and their resilience has been studied by researchers, mainly in the context of the developed world. There is a considerable paucity of such studies on the resilience of transportation infrastructure in the multimodal context, even in the developed world. Studies on the impact of disasters on the interface of maritime transport and land based transport in a seaport centered setting are scarce. Most studies in this context have been spurred in the aftermath of 9/11 and hence are essentially security oriented. In general it is observed that there is still no widely accepted measure for resilience of transportation infrastructure for any mode of transportation. The review also exposes the lack of serious research on the impact of disasters on the resilience of transportation and port infrastructure in the developing countries. Areas requiring further attention from researchers are identified.