Abstract:
Transportation infrastructure requires governments to invest and support research in this area. Discussions relevant to this usually happens after disruptive events when transportation attracts the attention of societies. In modern societies, however, governing the transportation sector is so fundamental that the discussions around measuring the resilience of transportation are on-going among decision-makers for planning and funding allocation purposes. Such discussions have resulted in the development of assessment tools for evaluating the resilience of transportation infrastructure. Consequently, much research has been carried out to provide users with flexible and optimised tools for measuring and evaluating resilience. Despite all these efforts, there is still a need to develop efficient approaches to select and implement these resilience assessments. To contribute to this demand, this thesis investigated the process of applying an appropriate resilience assessment tool in the transportation sector in New Zealand. Accordingly, this study aimed at 1) studying the criteria and procedure of selecting an appropriate resilience assessment tool and selecting a tool accordingly, 2) developing an efficient and feasible implementation approach for resilience assessment using the selected tool, and finally, 3) proposing modifications and improvement opportunities to increase the maturity and efficacy of the selected tool for practical implementation in the future. To achieve these set objectives, action research was designed after an initial extensive critical literature review. For the purpose of investigating the maturity and efficacy of the existing transportation resilience assessment tools, an expert consultation was conducted, followed by a need analysis of stakeholder participants to select and evaluate an appropriate tool. The selected tool then thoroughly analysed and accordingly implemented in three case studies for further investigation. The findings of the study could provide guidelines for effective implementation of resilience assessment by considering decision-makers and transport stakeholders’ expectations. The results also suggest improvement opportunities for the investigated resilience assessment tool. This thesis looked at resilience assessment in a practical way to highlight important considerations when selecting transportation resilience assessment tools. It also guides readers step by step in the implementation process designed based on the needs of road controlling authority and transport key stakeholders.