Evaluation of Flood-Vulnerable Pavement Network in Support of Resilience in Pavement System Management

Abstract

Transportation systems play a pivotal role in the nation’s economic and societal development. Transportation assets, such as pavements and bridges, are inevitably subject to the effects of climate and environment. These stressors mainly include flood, precipitation, heat, wildfire, and wind. Specifically, more extreme weather events, such as hurricanes and snowstorms, have occurred in recent years. This requires stakeholders to better prepare transportation infrastructure resilience in planning, design, construction, and management. Its importance is manifested through nationwide policy and state-level practice. For example, in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the FHWA directs all state DOTs to incorporate resilience in their transportation asset management plans. A critical element in resilience is to evaluate the effect of climatic or environmental stressors on facilities’ performance. This study examines the impact of flood on the TxDOT-managed pavement network. It proposes a method to evaluate the flood-vulnerable pavement network in the context of resilience. First, the GIS tool is used to overlap a 100-year frequency flood with the road network to identify weak pavement sections subject to flood risk. Second, a simulation is run to determine sections affected by flood over a 10-year analysis horizon. Then, different deterioration models are used to predict the network-level pavement performance, to reflect (1) normal deterioration without flood, (2) optimistic accelerated deterioration under flooding, and (3) pessimistic accelerated deterioration under flooding. It is found that the network-level pavement will experience varying levels of performance reduction, owing to a 100-year flood impact. The quantified performance change can serve to enhance infrastructure resilience preparation for more reliable pavement system management.