Resilience and Disaster Recovery Tool Suite for Evaluating Resilient Infrastructure Return on Investment with a Robust Decision-Making Metamodeling Approach

Abstract

There is a growing interest in enhancing the resilience of the transportation network in the face of hazards such as storms, flooding, and climate change impacts. Transportation agencies and planning organizations need tools to assess potential resilience-focused infrastructure projects and to support infrastructure project justifications. In support of the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, we developed the open-source, publicly available Resilience and Disaster Recovery (RDR) Tool Suite to evaluate resilient infrastructure return on investment. This tool suite is based on robust decision-making concepts that enable scenario analysis and decision making under uncertainty. The RDR Tool Suite leverages widely used travel demand modeling as well as benefit–cost analysis, breakeven analysis, and benefit–cost analysis under uncertainty to accommodate a range of data availability. The tool suite also includes an Exposure Analysis Tool to assist with assigning hazard severity to the transportation network. This paper provides an overview of the newly released RDR Tool Suite and its utility for transportation planning.